UWire » Greenhttp://uwire.com
College Press Releases and Wire ServiceSun, 02 Aug 2015 22:02:39 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1Al Gore talks climate changehttp://uwire.com/2013/02/07/al-gore-talks-climate-change/
http://uwire.com/2013/02/07/al-gore-talks-climate-change/#commentsThu, 07 Feb 2013 15:17:21 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=153884Vice President and Nobel Laureate Al Gore praised recent efforts of Harvard students involved in environment and divestment campaigns during a speech focused on the health hazards of global warming which he gave in Memorial Church on Wednesday night.

Hundreds of students and community members lined the Yard in hopes of securing a spot in Memorial Church to hear the man introduced as “in truth, the elected president by America.”

Eric S. Chivian, director of the Center for Health and Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, turned the stage over to Gore, whose talk was entitled “Healthy Planet, Healthy People.” The talk was sponsored by CHGE as part of the recently launched Paul R. Epstein Memorial Lecture Series.

During his talk, Gore lauded Harvard’s progress in becoming a more sustainable institution.

“One of my previous visits here with President Faust was to witness the launching of the Harvard Office of Sustainability,” said Gore. “And now some time has passed and we see extremely impressive results, not least of which is the incredible activism and engagement by students who have contributed to the progress the University has been able to make.”

Gore stated that consequences of global warming are compelling and devastating, but said that he believes in humanity’s ability to effect positive change.

“The dangers we face are almost unimaginably dire,” Gore said. “My hope is based on the history of our experience as a species.”

Gore said that the warming climate has destructive effects on human health. He noted examples of climate change that have influenced insect behavior and, therefore, the spread of diseases such as West Nile virus.

According to Gore, recent health dangers were anticipated by Epstein, a leader in the field of climate change at the Harvard School of Public Health.

“Everything that I’ve read to you about these recent findings was anticipated by Paul Epstein,” said Gore. “He wrote seminal papers 12 years ago. He saw the pattern very carefully and he was right. We all have a great debt to him.”

Gore voiced his disappointment in the current political system and the lack of discourse related to climate change in the recent presidential election.

However, he expressed hope in President Barack Obama’s ability to combat the rising temperature trends.

“I am optimistic today also because in his inspiring inaugural address, President Obama made the climate crisis the very first challenge he discussed and spent more words on it than any other. I was thrilled by that.”

The idea of the night was change. Gore continually stressed the urgency of the current situation, appealing to the audience with analogies.

“We’re using the atmosphere as an open sewer and it’s functionally insane,” Gore quipped.

]]>http://uwire.com/2013/02/07/al-gore-talks-climate-change/feed/0Column: Justified civil disobediencehttp://uwire.com/2013/01/31/column-justified-civil-disobedience/
http://uwire.com/2013/01/31/column-justified-civil-disobedience/#commentsThu, 31 Jan 2013 15:08:26 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=153174Over winter break, I was arrested with seven other students for staging a lock-in at the Westborough, Mass. office of the TransCanada Corporation in protest of the Keystone XL pipeline. Bound together with chains, sitting beneath the corporation’s logo and the American flag, we made the point that TransCanada is locking our generation into irreversible climate disaster by pushing forward new fossil fuel infrastructure projects like the Keystone XL pipeline.

Growing up, I never expected to be arrested for civil disobedience, but today I find myself and my generation in a desperate situation. We are living in a time of great crisis—the climate crisis. The World Bank recently published a report announcing that we are on track to warm the planet up by four degrees Celsius by the end of the century. The report details predictions of intense heat waves, widespread water shortages, massive wildfires, and the disruption of livelihoods around the world. These alarming details, however, are overshadowed by the authors’ terrifying statement that “there is no certainty that adaptation to a 4°C world would be possible.”

We may not be able to adapt to global warming. The basis of our civilization could fall out from under our feet within our lifetimes. Everything we have ever worked for—all the cities, the families, the art, the science—could be lost.

Unfortunately, the unbendable rules of chemistry and physics have set a very narrow timeframe for action against the climate crisis. After humans have warmed the planet up a certain amount, we will cross a natural “tipping point,” such as the melting of the arctic tundra and the accompanying release of potent greenhouse gases locked under its surface. After these tipping points, the Earth will begin to warm itself, and any success we have in lowering our own greenhouse gas emissions will not stop the warming. No one knows exactly when the tipping points will arrive, but the International Energy Agency has projected that we will be “locked in” to irreversible climate change in four years because of our continued construction of fossil fuel infrastructure.

Rage boils up inside of me when I look at these numbers because the world did not need to let things go this close to the edge. Scientists have been calling for action for more years than I have been alive, yet our government has failed to act. The costs of inaction grow each day, as the timeframe left to transition to renewables shortens and the impacts of climate change, from last summer’s droughts in the Midwest to Superstorm Sandy, start to take their toll. Even today, our government has failed to act with enough resolve to really solve the problem. Its failure is inexcusable.

If our government will not stop these corporations on the basis of strong scientific and economic arguments, then we must produce the political will to stop them through our actions. The traditional methods of political mobilization—rallies, lobbying, even opinion polls that show 88 percent support for government action on climate change—have failed to overcome the stranglehold that fossil fuel corporations have on our government. Civil disobedience has thus become a logical and necessary next step for the increasingly powerful and desperate climate movement.

Our action in Westborough was not an anomaly but rather an addition to a growing nationwide narrative as more and more people turn to civil disobedience to stop the climate crisis. Over 1,200 activists were arrested for a sit-in against Keystone XL outside the White House, while dozens of Texan activists have taken courageous direct action to prevent and delay construction of the pipeline’s southern leg. Coal mines, natural gas fracking wells, and other fossil fuel infrastructure projects are becoming hotbeds for civil disobedience, as are the offices of the decision-makers who irresponsibly let the projects proceed. In a sign of the times, the Sierra Club recently made the first exception in 120 years to its policy against civil disobedience.

By putting our bodies on the line in acts of peaceful civil disobedience, we are making the ultimate moral statement. The message sent by our sacrifices will reverberate through society until the corporations give up or the government finally finds the political will to stop them.

The task of transitioning to renewable energy may look daunting, but as our acts of civil disobedience make clear, our commitment to survival is non-negotiable.

]]>http://uwire.com/2013/01/31/column-justified-civil-disobedience/feed/0Column: Renewable energy is essentialhttp://uwire.com/2013/01/29/column-renewable-energy-is-essential/
http://uwire.com/2013/01/29/column-renewable-energy-is-essential/#commentsWed, 30 Jan 2013 02:57:50 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=152981In a world full of technological advancements and exponentially growing populations, it’s no wonder the planet’s nonrenewable resources are being depleted at an alarming rate. This is especially true in the United States, where we consume at least 20 percent of the world’s total energy resources. Keep in mind, we only make up 5 percent of the entire world’s population, yet as a whole we use up so much more energy than necessary without thinking much about it.

To put it in a more straightforward perspective: Americans consume about four times more resources than necessary, significantly limiting the resources available to those in other countries. Several developing countries do not even have access to clean drinking water, let alone many other resources which we take for granted with our lavish lifestyles.

Fossil fuels (such as coal, oil and natural gas) are currently the most commonly used sources of energy, despite the fact that they are far more harmful to the environment than several other sources. They are a nonpoint source of pollution (runoff that moves through the ground via rainfall and snowmelt which carries pollutants into various bodies of water) and a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions.

As hopefully all of you have noticed by now, there has been a significant spike in gas prices over this decade, and if we continue to rely on fossil fuels for every aspect of our energy use, the cost of gas will continue to climb. Eventually, the cost of retrieving fossil fuels will probably be too expensive for many of us to buy due to the rapid rate in which we’re using it; Provided we do not run out of these finite sources completely.

There have been success stories about vehicles powered by fuels such as water and electricity, but they are uncommon and have yet to be fully developed. In addition, the average American simply cannot afford to trade their current gas-guzzling cars for new energy efficient ones. For now, the limited resources necessary to power our vehicles should be used wisely and for things which do not have a decent alternative source of power available.

Luckily, over the years people have been coming up with new and exciting ways to harness renewable energy that is friendlier to humans and ecosystems alike.

One method, which has been a popular topic in the Iowa State U. news lately, is wind energy. As many of you have seen, a new, small wind turbine has been set up on the east side of campus. This project cost $250,000, but it can create enough electricity to power buildings like Catt Hall and East Hall for an entire year. In statistical terms, it can generate up to $18,000 (.12 percent) worth of Iowa State’s electrical needs annually, which is about 183,330-kilowatt hours. Iowa State also has partial ownership of a large wind turbine farm in northern Story County.

In Iowa, wind turbine farms have been increasing in popularity over the years and produce approximately twenty percent of the state’s electricity. There are nearly 3,000 utility-scale turbines in the state; enough to power over one million homes. Iowa is also rated No. 1 in wind energy related employment in the nation by offering at least 3,000 jobs, if not more.

Best of all, aside from the start up costs, wind energy is renewable and has less hazardous effects on the environment. There are several other types of similar renewable energy resources that would be better alternatives to fossil fuels, such as solar energy, hydropower and biomass energy. In addition, there are a few energy sources that have the potential to be useful but are not very cost-effective or easily acquired right now, such as geothermal energy, hydrogen and ocean energy.

Overall, it is in everyone’s best interest to be conscious of the energy they consume and where it comes from. Developing awareness of renewable energy is essential. If the human species continues on the current trajectory of heavy fossil fuel usage, the impacts it will have on our lives and the environment could be devastating in the near future.

]]>http://uwire.com/2013/01/29/column-renewable-energy-is-essential/feed/0Column: Saturday night in Beijinghttp://uwire.com/2013/01/15/column-saturday-night-in-beijing/
http://uwire.com/2013/01/15/column-saturday-night-in-beijing/#commentsWed, 16 Jan 2013 01:42:00 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=151927Beijing has always been good at being ‘off the charts.’ Anyone who has observed China’s remarkable economic growth or watched the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympics can attest to this fact. Recent air pollution readings coming out of Beijing keep in step with this tradition.

At 8 p.m, on January 12th, Beijing’s Air Quality Index was recorded to be 755, more than 200 points above the supposed maximum of 500.

China’s environmental woes are no secret. The 2008 Olympics turned the global spotlight onto China’s pollution problems when concerns where raised as to whether or not the athletes participating would be able to perform at their usual levels due to the overwhelming levels of air pollution in Beijing. The World Wildlife Fund reports that in addition to severe air pollution, around 40 percent of the rivers in China contain water unfit for human consumption. Nearly 30 percent of China’s land has suffered from desertification, the environmental phenomenon in which dry land loses water, wildlife, and vegetation. In 2006, China passed the United States to become, by volume, the world’s largest producer of greenhouse gases.

The country has, of course, taken steps to mitigate the environmental issues it faces. In November of last year, China announced the introduction of a mandatory “social risk assessment” for all major industrial projects as a method of gaging the environmental impact of new developments. On a smaller scale, the government of Guangzhou, one of the biggest automobile manufacturing cities in China, announced that it would begin to limit the number of vehicles on the road with lotteries and auctions for license plates for new cars, thus cutting down the amount of new cars on the city’s street by roughly half.

But the news coming out of Beijing this weekend signals that the country’s pollution problem has escalated to a new level. The index, which is established upon the Environmental Protection Agency’s standards, marks an air pollution rating of 400 or above as “hazardous for all.” The level recorded in China on Saturday night was nearly double that. By contrast, on the same day, using the same standards, New York City received an air quality rating of 19. The rising levels of pollution in China are a testament to the fact that the steps taken by the Chinese government are neither dramatic nor intense enough to seriously combat the issue.

By virtue of the ecological structures of our planet, climate change isn’t just China’s problem; it’s the world’s. Higher greenhouse emission levels from China means increased levels of climate change globally. Water pollution in China translates to lower water quality worldwide. Scientists across the United States have pointed to climate change as one of the chief causes for the severity of weather disasters such as Hurricane Sandy. 2012 was the hottest year ever recorded.

Hence, climate change is, by nature, an international issue. Ultimately, this means the United States has less control over this issue than issues such as gun control or the debt ceiling. The United States acting unilaterally in the eleventh hour will bring no solution to this problem. Furthermore, that same international aspect of the issue means that the actions of any and every country around the globe have repercussions in the U.S. However, the United States is and, for the foreseeable future, will be a superpower. In terms of environmental issues, this means the responsibility of seriously tackling the issue lies with the U.S. Only once we begin to do so, will China and other countries follow in step. We must show a commitment to putting an end to man-made climate change before we can expect other nations to do the same. Moreover, the scale of the issue means that there exists no quick fix, no silver bullet. Instead, solutions to the problem must be multi-faceted and must be based around a long-term plan. All of these factors point to the fact that the time for action is now.

In roughly a week, President Obama will be inaugurated for his second term. During the next four years, he will have to address gun control, the debt ceiling, and tax policy. All of these issues are pressing and deserve attention. However, time spent focusing on these problems cannot become time lost addressing climate change. President Obama mounted both his campaigns on the slogan, “Change We Can Believe In.” And whether you believe it or not, climate change’s consequences will be severe.

]]>http://uwire.com/2013/01/15/column-saturday-night-in-beijing/feed/0Column: Bottled water is far from purehttp://uwire.com/2012/11/15/column-bottled-water-is-far-from-pure/
http://uwire.com/2012/11/15/column-bottled-water-is-far-from-pure/#commentsThu, 15 Nov 2012 15:19:33 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=148682Banning the sale of bottled water on campus might seem like an odd way to take a stand against social injustice, but few people fully understand exactly what they are sipping from their disposable plastic bottles. The issues associated with bottled water and the privatization of water in general far exceed those of roadside litter and landfills.

The environmental issues surrounding bottled water are nothing new. Plastic bottles are made from a byproduct of refining oil and, when accompanied with the gasoline used to transport the bottles from one place to another, give bottled water a huge carbon footprint. Also, only 10 percent of plastic bottles are recycled, sending the rest to landfills, incinerators and waterways, according to Food & Water Watch.

One issue students may find particularly hard to swallow is the effect that water privatization has on human rights in our global community. Buying bottled water supports international companies who have succeeded in privatizing all municipal water in third world countries. The privatization of Bolivian water has led to a doubling of water prices. Many Bolivians cannot afford the price increase and there have been mass riots across the nation.

In addition to hurting the global water system, buying bottled water supports unjust efforts right here at home. Several towns in our country have had their municipal water sources claimed and bottled by big companies like Nestlé, Coca-Cola and Pepsi. Even during times of drought, these Americans are forced to buy what used to be a free resource. Even as they grow thirsty, the companies continue to bottle.

In a survey administered to the American U. community in October 2012, one student posed the argument that purchasing bottled water is everyone’s right. In response, students declared our freedoms only extend until they infringe on the rights of others. Everyone has a right to clean, safe drinking water. This freedom should not be sacrificed for our luxury of drinking from disposable bottles while our sinks are filled with safer, cleaner water.

The most common misconception about bottled water is its superiority to tap water. D.C. tap water is checked for bacteria several times a day and has a water quality report available online. Nationally, tap water is regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency under the Safe Drinking Water Act and is held to higher standards for safety than bottled water, which is regulated as a food product by the Food and Drug Administration. Additionally, the FDA gives the responsibility for safety checks directly to the bottled water companies, who are never legally required to release this information.

Also, plastic water bottles contain PETs, a chemical that is linked with cancer and reproductive issues. PETs begin to leak from the bottle and into the water instantly. The chemicals leak into the water increasingly due to the duration and temperature at which the bottle is kept. Ironic that the labels wrapped around those bottles read “pure,” “clean,” and “natural.”

The Take Back the Tap campus group is working to ban the sale of bottled water on the AU campus. Our goal is to have the administration agree to a campus-wide ban of bottled water sales. Bottled water will be available off campus and all other bottled beverages will continue to be available for purchase on campus. To find out more about the issue or get involved, please contact TakeBackTheTapAU@gmail.com.

The Associated Press recently reported that as a result of a four-year boom in oil production, the United States could pass Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest producer of oil. This news comes during a time when Americans are increasingly concerned about oil prices and stability in the Middle East.

Energy independence has long been a rallying cry for politicians claiming to support American national security. This phrase has become synonymous with a variety of initiatives, namely the escalation of domestic drilling as embodied by the 2008 Republican campaign slogan “drill, baby, drill,” as well as ongoing efforts to pioneer efficient and cost-effective alternative energy sources. However, through all of this, the United States has, out of necessity, been forced to import a large amount of its oil. Though much has been said about the supply of oil in the Middle East, the largest exporter of oil to the United States is Canada, providing just over a billion barrels of oil so far in 2012 compared to the 436 million barrels from Saudi Arabia. Nonetheless, U.S. dependence on foreign oil still poses a major national security threat, and the news that the United States has experienced its fourth-straight increase in annual oil production provides U.S. planners with a variety of options. This should not be interpreted as an opening for complacency when it comes to investing in alternative energy sources.

With an increase in domestic production, currently at about 11.4 million barrels per day, the domestic need, currently at 18 million barrels per day, will increasingly be met by domestic production. This means that more and more money spent on oil will be pumped into the U.S. economy, with obvious benefits to the American population. However, this also means that, as oil prices drop and the fear of dependence on oil from the Middle East recedes, there will be a decrease in public pressure on politicians and the private sector to come up with effective and cost-efficient alternative energy sources and to discover new sources of domestic petroleum.

As college students, the events that transpire today with regard to America’s energy policy will have significant and long-lasting consequences in our adult years. Whether we progress on a path toward finding alternative energy sources to, at first, coexist with petroleum and then replace it or become complacent with falling oil prices and rising independence, our choice will heavily weigh on our ability to sustain ourselves when the world’s oil production reaches its Hubbert peak. Therefore, we must be proactive to avoid the devastating effects of this peak to the world’s oil supplies. The breathing room that will be provided by greater independence and greater domestic oil production must be converted into research into alternative energies so that this breathing room can continue into the future.

Therefore, the new flow of wealth that will be diverted from international markets to the domestic economy must be used to supplement existing funding for research into alternative energy sources. The basic rule of capitalism is that when there is a demand for a product, the supply for that product will respond accordingly. Thus, the first step to achieving any form of true energy independence based on the short-term combination of petroleum and alternative energy sources is to continue to provide this demand on the market. Over the past decade, automobile fuel efficiency has increased. Hybrid cars have become more commonplace and solar panels, windmills, hydroelectric plants and nuclear reactors have increasingly taken a larger role in satisfying America’s energy needs.

To complement the increase in research and public interest in alternative energy sources, we need a massive investment in America’s electric grid. The current grid is largely outdated and inefficient. To provide for the dramatically growing energy needs of the American public, and to supplant transportation inefficiencies — a major obstacle to the effective implementation of alternative energy sources such as solar, wind and hydroelectric because of their need to be located at appropriate, and often remote, sites — that come from transporting electricity, the American electric grid must be updated and renovated to include the most advanced technologies so that it may efficiently distribute power throughout the country.

American oil production is increasing, and with this increase will come many benefits to the American economy, its national security and foreign policy; however, this good fortune cannot be met with complacency but instead with an increased determination to extend the benefits of energy independence and sustainability into the future.

This would mean that CO2 emissions would be capped, and any company wanting to exceed the cap could buy credit from companies below it. It is this kind of split that separates the party line.

Obama wants to continue drilling but understands such production needs regulation to be carried out on a sustainable level. He rejects the Republican mentality, warning that they would “let oil companies write the country’s energy plan” and opts for a cleaner plan for American energy production.

Where we source energy is becoming increasingly political, with civil unrest in the Arab world and rising prices. Obama understands that America needs to address the issue from a point of national security. This means we have to look at protecting ourselves through three angles: securing American energy independence, climate change and our environment.

Obama’s term has already seen a reduction in America’s dependence on foreign oil, and American production has increased.

But he has also paved a more responsible path to the production.

After disasters like the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Obama has learned that oil production can have huge repercussions if not handled carefully. By carefully managing oil production, he has also allowed for increased investment in alternative resources.

He has supported wind farms, solar energy and geothermal projects. Not only are these necessary complements to America’s oil and gas usage, but they are innovative. By investing time and research in these processes, America is leading the way in the world of technological development.

Out of these, we have not just made energy; we have created a field of greener advances. From the big to the small, projects such as the plug-in, hybrid electric car will change the way we live. This is the forward mentality of an America that is constantly progressing.

President Obama has also sought to increase the energy resources we have available by decreasing the amount of energy we need to use to run our cars. His administration has set in place a policy that will double the fuel efficiency of new cars by Model Year 2025 by raising standards for cars and light-duty trucks to over 54 miles per gallon. Getting more energy from the fuel we already produce is a guaranteed strategy for reducing consumption and costs in the future.

With cleaner ways of making the energy we use, we are also addressing the bigger issue of climate change. If America is seen by the international community as moving toward a more sustainable environmental policy, others will follow, and the global effort to fight climate change will increase.

It’s leading by example. That brings it back to our environment. This will benefit directly from Obama’s attention to cleaner energy production, but he has already made many positive changes in detail. The president’s record speaks for itself.

He has dramatically increased protections for air quality and has been committed to protecting green spaces. One of his most attractive policies has been the conservation of wild spaces. In 2009, he launched a program to protect over 2 million acres of federal wilderness, trails and rivers. It is not only morally important to coexist with the climate we inhabit, but it is also of economic benefit. By protecting our land, we can use the resources it offers at a more sustainable rate that will, in turn, increase economic activity.

President Obama clearly understands how best to balance our competing national security, economic and environmental interests so that we can develop a sustainable and forward-looking energy policy. The alternative could very well be an irresponsible and potentially damaging development that wouldn’t meet any of America’s vital interests and could actually undermine them.

]]>http://uwire.com/2012/10/29/column-obama-offers-sustainable-energy-policy/feed/0Column: The climate we ask forhttp://uwire.com/2012/10/24/column-the-climate-we-ask-for/
http://uwire.com/2012/10/24/column-the-climate-we-ask-for/#commentsWed, 24 Oct 2012 13:41:15 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=145990As Americans, we constantly congratulate ourselves on our spirit of innovation. Yet, we give our government no incentive to be forward thinking about important long-term problems like climate change. Obama and Romney aren’t talking about the environment because we haven’t really asked them to do so.

This contradiction isn’t our fault—democracy just doesn’t always reward anticipation. Politicians are accountable to voters whose main concerns generally include how to feed their familiesand keep their jobs and houses. And it is this combination of preoccupied voters and cowardly lawmakers that has kept the U.S. from tackling climate change in any sort of comprehensive way.

It’s no surprise that a recent Gallup poll showed 72 percent of Americans thought the economy was today’s most important problem. A mere two percent saw pollution and the environment as the most important problem. Yet, the two problems are undoubtedly connected. MIT economist Henry Jacoby predicts, “People will pay…[for inaction on climate change] in taxes, energy prices, insurance premiums, disaster relief, food prices, water bills and changes to our environment that are hard to put a price tag on.”

We’re constantly flooded with startling facts about rising ocean levels and shrinking rainforests. To those who pay attention, climate change is clearly imminent, and it’s approaching the brink of irreversibility. Scientists predict a nearly complete lack of wild fish in oceans by 2050. At the beginning of his numerical rundown of the current state of the climate, activist and writer William E. McKibben grimly states, “I can say with some confidence that we’re losing the fight, badly and quickly—losing it because, most of all, we remain in denial about the peril that human civilization is in.”

Denial isn’t the only reason that the situation is stagnant—for those who are thinking short-term, there is a valid economic argument against cutting emissions. The fossil fuel sector certainly isn’t a small deal, and the world economy is invested in the future of drilling. Construction of the southern part of Keystone XL is already underway.

While economic hurdles block a smooth transition from fossil fuels to cleaner energy, the carbon tax represents a potent economic solution. The Kennedy School’s Joseph Aldy showed his support for the carbon tax in his talk at Harvard Thinks Green 2 last week. A tax on carbon would de-incentivize the purchase of carbon and naturally force investment in alternative energies. It would provide the economic impetus currently lacking from the green movement.

Even conservative economist and policy advisor Greg Mankiw expressed his support of a world carbon tax in a 2007 New York Times op-ed, but he doubted that a carbon tax would make it through Washington. Mankiw wrote, “Republican consultants advise using the word ‘tax’ only if followed immediately by the word ‘cut.’ Democratic consultants recommend the word ‘tax’ be followed by ‘on the rich.’”

It would simply be political suicide for a Republican to support a new tax of any kind, and Democrats are too busy trying to get rid of tax breaks for the rich that suggesting a carbon tax right now might very well be too much. Yet, logical thinking would demand that our lawmakers push aside all of those political fears for the sake of doing something that makes pure and total sense.

China’s Communist Party recently released its new five-year plan, a strategic move that will end up investing $315 billion in measures for energy efficiency. And because of the one-party system, China can afford to be aggressive in the way it pursues its alternative energy goals. The National Energy Commission has asked each province in China to provide a plan for increased solar energy use by October 15. China remains the world’s largest coal consumer, but these steps represent a significant effort to reduce emissions. The United States is the world’s largest consumer of oil, but political polarization and corporate influence would block any clean energy initiatives of a similar scale.

So while China’s alternative energy plans charge forward, the US is stuck with little to no political or economic push for sustainability.

This problem is not unique to the U.S., and it’s why very little has been done in the way of large international agreements. Recent climate discussions have all failed miserably—it’s as if every time someone mentions the words Kyoto, Cop10, or Rio+20, the environmental community emits a collective sigh of frustration.

Our markets are so interdependent that changes in energy consumption have global effects, and therefore countries must tackle the issue through a combination of domestic policies and international cooperation. The U.S. could help shape the international debate on climate change, but it chooses not to because U.S. citizens have yet to demand the discussion.

Our government spends billions of dollars each year on defense. We stockpile more weapons than we will ever use. But the prospect of entire countries being submerged under water as a result of large scale flooding is in many ways equally as scary as a nuclear Iran. And just like our founding fathers were worried about the political freedoms of every generation to come, should we not be intensely concerned about the safety and welfare of our future generations? And should we not demand from our representatives that same view?

]]>http://uwire.com/2012/10/24/column-the-climate-we-ask-for/feed/0Column: The natural gas debatehttp://uwire.com/2012/10/22/column-the-natural-gas-debate/
http://uwire.com/2012/10/22/column-the-natural-gas-debate/#commentsMon, 22 Oct 2012 14:10:54 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=145722On New Year’s Day 2009, a residential drinking water well in Dimock, Pennsylvania, exploded without warning. Investigations after the incident revealed that a stray spark touched off methane fumes that had been slowly been accumulating in the well for weeks prior to the incident, causing what could well have been a lethal explosion. Further tests by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PADEP) and the EPA found methane-contaminated drinking water in the wells of several other Dimock households. No conclusive link between Cabot Oil and Gas’s drilling activities and the explosion was established, but the incidents brought national media coverage to the shale gas debate.

Much press and controversy has surrounded the rise of shale gas drilling, particularly in Pennsylvania and New York. Nevertheless, natural gas as an energy source provides substantial benefits, both geopolitical and environmental, that cannot be ignored. As the United States seeks to move towards a more sustainable and stable energy future, the crucial role of shale gas development has become readily apparent. Still, much of the critical discourse necessary to formulate sound policy has been obscured by partisan inertia on the national level and deep division on the local level, as well as substantial yet hyperbolic media coverage.

The Argument for Natural Gas

Carbon dioxide emissions in the United States have dropped off precipitously in the past few years, an unpredicted new development largely attributed to the availability of inexpensive natural gas—the exponential growth of drilling in the Marcellus and other shale formations has more than halved its cost.

Natural gas is often touted as a more environmentally friendly alternative to traditional fossil fuels such as oil and coal. John Hanger, the former secretary of PADEP, told the HPR in a recent interview, “Over fifty-five percent of our energy comes from coal and oil, both of which cause infinitely more harmful environmental impacts that [natural] gas ever could or ever will.” According to the EPA, natural gas-fired power plants emit half the carbon dioxide, a third of the nitrogen oxides, and 1 percent of the sulfur oxides produced by coal-fired plants, while also avoiding the heavy metal-laden waste associated with coal.

As the cost of natural gas extraction has fallen drastically in the past few years, it has become the fuel of choice for many industries. Many are optimistic about the role natural gas has to play in shaping a cleaner energy future; among them is Seamus McGraw, author of The End of Country: Dispatches from the Frack Zone, who noted in a recent interview with the HPR, “[T]he risks associated with natural gas are profound and it is still a fossil fuel and a source of carbon and other pollution… but [shale gas drilling] has reduced as a result our dependency on the single dirtiest, deadliest form of energy there is.”

Shale formations span the length of the Eastern seaboard, covering most of upstate New York, western and central Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio, extending as far south as Mississippi and Alabama. Other shale formations include the Barnett Shale in Texas and the Antrim in Michigan. The Marcellus shale formation alone contains gas reservoirs that Penn State University geosciences professor Terry Engelder has conservatively estimated to contain 168 trillion cubic feet (TCF) of natural gas—five and a half times what the United States currently produces in a year. Shale gas drilling has already almost singlehandedly reduced the cost of natural gas by fifty percent, making it an increasingly attractive energy option.

As the United States tries to reduce its carbon emissions to curb global warming, many proponents of shale gas drilling have touted natural gas as a cost-effective bridge fuel to a renewable energy economy. Estimates of recoverable natural gas in shale formations predict no more than a century’s worth of natural gas, at current usage rates. Even supporters of shale gas development acknowledge that it can only be a temporary fix. “We don’t have a hundred years,” McGraw asserts. “If we’re still burning [natural gas] in thirty years, we’re screwed.”

Frack No: The Shale Gas Story in New York and Pennsylvania

The past five years have seen the rise of shale gas drilling from novel application to industry bulwark. According to the Energy Information Administration, shale gas’s share of the domestic natural gas market has risen from 1 percent in the year 2000 to almost 20 percent in 2010. Along with its meteoric rise has come a vociferous and diverse public response.

Towns like Dimock in northeastern Pennsylvania have become a flashpoint for the shale gas controversy. Tensions between neighbors run high, with Dimock resident Anne Teel telling NPR’s StateImpact, “I don’t like to go to the grocery store and have neighbors who won’t say hello to me. That’s not the way I live. But that’s unfortunately what’s happened because of this.” Virulent anti-fracking sentiment has led to enormous pressure on local and state governments to respond quickly to new developments in drilling technology, but regulation has by its nature remained several steps behind each new advancement.

Hundreds of townships, however, have taken legal action in the courts and through zoning restrictions to block the construction of drill sites and recoup damages from contaminated water and air. “Since the oil and gas industries are largely exempt from any uniform federal level of regulation … and it’s largely up to the states to regulate oil and gas activity,” Tony Ingraffea, a professor at Cornell University’s School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, told the HPR, “the people of New York have seen what’s happened in Pennsylvania, and [townships are] not confident that the New York DEC can do any better of a job at this point than the Pennsylvania DEP.”

Shale gas drilling in New York and Pennsylvania has developed along radically different lines—whereas the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has yet to finish what has become a five-year long review of shale gas drilling in the state, Pennsylvania has almost 9000 unconventional gas wells on the books as of this June and approves dozens more drill sites on a monthly basis.

With almost one-third of land in the state of Pennsylvania under lease to drilling companies, the potential impacts of drilling in the state are astronomical. “Over the next few decades, there will be hundreds of thousands of wells, tens of thousands of miles of pipelines, tens of thousands of miles of roads, that will spin like a spider web across the state…and we don’t know what the cumulative impacts of that will be,” John Quigley, former secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, told the HPR.

The Road Forward

The EPA, for all of its efforts, has been hobbled by the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which exempted oil and gas companies from many provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act, and thus from EPA jurisdiction. Legislation at the federal level to mandate the disclosure of lists of fracking chemicals was first introduced in both the House and Senate in 2009, but has yet to move out of committee. Both presidential candidates appear to have given fracking a pass in this election cycle: while Romney lambasted Obama in an April campaign stop in Tunkhannock, Pa. for delaying natural gas development with overregulation, the Obama campaign has touted the increase in natural gas development as an integral part of the President’s “all-of-the-above” energy strategy.

Environmental groups remain hopeful that the citizen outcry will result in action on a national level. Some have compared the current debate over shale gas drilling to the debate over pesticides in the 1970s. “There wasn’t action at the federal level, so communities started taking action for themselves—they created buffer zones, they outright banned certain pesticides … and we eventually saw action at the federal level,” Kathleen Sutcliffe, a campaign manager at Earthjustice, told the HPR.

PADEP has introduced a whole host of new regulations on water usage and water waste disposal in the past few years, and the New York State DEC is currently considering the public health effects of shale gas drilling before releasing an environmental impact statement, but the regulatory process remains slow. Longitudinal studies on long-term impacts of shale gas drilling are scarce, and Geisinger Health System, a healthcare provider in Pennsylvania, is beginning one of the first of such studies this year. “We can’t afford to repeat the mistakes of the past,” Quigley said. “The way forward is with good regulation, good industry practice, and good science.”

The shale gas narrative has unfolded along the traditional paths of industry and environment, citizens and corporations. From media to policy, the debate over fracking is a microcosm of the paralysis and polarization plaguing our politics writ large. Whatever the best path forward may be, what is certain is that our action—or inaction—on shale gas will define the world’s energy and environmental future for decades to come.

As Election Day nears, don’t worry about trying to understand every issue the candidates discuss. Instead, look at the effects of those ideas. There are so many issues that come up in the presidential race and it is next to impossible for voters to be knowledgeable about all of them.

It is possible for voters to look at the candidates’ stance about the appropriate size of government and from there make a reasonable decision of who to vote for. For example, the debate about clean coal actually boils down to a debate about the size of government.

But what actually is clean coal and why are we hearing about it?

I watched the first presidential debate Oct. 3, with my roommates who major in chemistry and environmental science. At a comment made about clean coal, they burst out laughing, saying there was no such thing. Also, this term has made its way into political ads. So I decided to look into it a little more.

In the presidential race, we have seen two distinct opinions develop.

President Barack Obama believes in the investment in green energy. In the past four years, Obama has won more than $10 billion in private investments toward green energy. He plans to promote research and investment in green energy, including clean coal technology, and regulations on harmful energy production.

This belief calls for the federal government to take responsibility. This is consistent with his stances on other issues, such as healthcare, jobs and education.

Republican candidate Mitt Romney does not go into detail about clean coal on his website. But he believes that energy production should be able to control energy production, and it should be certified by federal agencies, but led by individual states. This means that each state could decide how clean its energy is.

This side calls for the federal government to play a more limited role, and for the states to play a larger role. This is consistent with his stances on Medicare and education.

Regardless of who you believe should be responsible for the future of this technology, the federal or state government, clean coal could be a very important technology to the future of the production of energy in America. It is something that people should be aware of, especially in a state that promotes their interest in green energy.

The term “clean coal” was created by R&R Partners. These are the people who brought us the popular “what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” slogan. Big companies, such as Duke Power, Peabody Energy and BHP Billiton, latched onto this term by producing a multi-million dollar campaign. They spent $35 million in 2008 alone.

The term “clean coal” refers to the technology used to limit the environmental effects of coal.

Coal as an energy source is very important. The International Energy Agency estimated that 70 percent of the energy used between now and 2050 will come from fossil fuels, such as coal. It is also known as the dirtiest form of fossil fuel energy.

When burning coal for energy, carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides are released into the atmosphere. These chemicals can cause acid rain, water pollution and human health problems.

There are five types of clean coal technology that stand out: coal washing, wet scrubbers, electrostatic precipitators, gasification, and carbon capture and storage. These technologies use a variety of methods, but one common factor is that each of these technologies is very expensive. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimated that carbon capture and storage could add between 50 to 100 percent to coal energy costs, an increase that many companies and Americans are uncomfortable with.

This presents a valid business concern, but it is also a valid demand. If we know the source of multiple problems, shouldn’t a solution be demanded? The use of coal is causing serious harm to our health and environment; therefore it is not out of line for the government (or anybody) to demand an alternative or at least a reduction.

Also, data from demonstration storage projects will not be available until 2013. This means construction on the first carbon capture and storage plants will not start until at least 2020, which means there is plenty of time to debate about which type of technology will be the most practical and create an effective plan.

As Election Day draws near, look at the stances each candidate takes and then think about what the implications of those stances will look like for our nation. Then you will make an informed decision.

Dean of the Georgetown School of Foreign Service Carol Lancaster introduced Clinton, calling her a “Hoya by marriage” and lauding her years of work in government.

“Secretary Clinton has come to embody the Georgetown spirit of public service,” Lancaster said.

Clinton began her talk by outlining the impact of energy concerns on international affairs, saying that the issue is at the core of geopolitics, economic growth and global development.

“Fundamentally, energy is a source of wealth and power, which means it can be both a source of conflict and cooperation,” she said. “Energy cuts across the entirety of U.S. foreign policy.”

She also detailed the Obama administration’s recent initiatives to develop a more progressive and independent energy policy.

“Many Americans don’t yet realize the gains that the United States has made,” she said, citing increased use of wind, solar and natural gas and the implementation of new automobile fuel efficiency standards.

“We are less reliant on imported energy, which strengthens our global economic and political standing,” she said. “The important thing to keep in mind is our country is not and cannot be an island when it comes to energy markets.”

Under Clinton’s leadership, the Department of State created a new Bureau of Energy Resources that orchestrates the department’s diplomatic efforts on energy.

“We did not have a team of experts dedicated full time to thinking creatively about how we can solve challenges and seize opportunities, and now we do,” Clinton said. “That … is a signal of a broader commitment on the part of the United States to lead in shaping the global energy future.”

Here, Clinton turned and pointed to the front row, where six Georgetown alumni who work in the bureau were sitting.

“That’s a shameless pitch for the Foreign Service and the State Department,” she said.

Clinton went on to explain the three pillars of the Department of State’s policies on energy: energy diplomacy, energy transformation and energy poverty. She cited the department’s efforts in Iran, Sudan and South Sudan, Iraq and the Arctic and said that the United States must play a role in preventing conflict over energy resources.

Clinton also spoke of the necessity of transitioning to cleaner energy sources, arguing that the United States has the knowledge and resources to promote green energy in other countries. She talked about a new initiative, “Connecting the Americas 2022,” that aims to provide universal access to electricity in the Americas within 10 years.

“Interconnection will help us get the most out of our region’s resources,” she said. “It really is a win-win-win in our opinion.”

In terms of energy poverty, Clinton detailed her administration’s efforts to promote transparency and equal access to energy in developing countries.

“Poor governance … is a key factor in energy poverty and political instability,” she said. “We need to ensure that energy resources don’t cause more suffering than good.”

Overall, Clinton promoted an active role for the United States in global energy issues.

“We have no choice. … We have to be involved,” she said. “The challenges I’ve outlined will only become more urgent in the years ahead … and all of us have a stake in the outcome.”

Matthew McManus, deputy director of public diplomacy and policy analysis in the Bureau of Energy Resources, shared how Georgetown should get involved in the conversation about sustainability.

“It is important for us to engage the next generation and to really have a debate about the best path forward for energy security, our planet and the environment,” he said.

]]>http://uwire.com/2012/10/19/hillary-clinton-talks-energy-goals/feed/0Column: Nuclear energy is better than climate changehttp://uwire.com/2012/10/09/column-nuclear-energy-is-better-than-climate-change/
http://uwire.com/2012/10/09/column-nuclear-energy-is-better-than-climate-change/#commentsTue, 09 Oct 2012 21:23:18 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=144205Every day, the United States alone releases more than 19 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. This fact and the unprecedented danger it poses to society inarguably need to be addressed.

For those who recognize our harrowing environmental circumstance and are compelled to heed to the call of sustainability (as we all should), there are means of action. Low-carbon alternatives to conventional consumer goods are becoming ubiquitous, and there is an incipient cultural shift toward more sustainable lifestyles that will surely play a prominent role in the future.

But we can only go so far in our individual efforts. We must not neglect the need for large-scale, government-run operations to assuage our addiction to fossil fuels. It is for precisely this reason we all must abandon our naive fears of nuclear energy and embrace nuclear power for what it really is: a safe, convenient and efficient source of energy that must be utilized if we are to seriously combat our climate crisis.

In any pragmatic examination of energy policy, there are three key terms that must first be established: baseload, footprint and portfolio.

Gwyneth Cravens, an environmental activist and former New Yorker editor, explains baseload most concisely in her 2007 book, Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy. Cravens describes baseload as “the minimum amount of proven, consistent, around-the-clock power that utilities must supply to meet the demands of their millions of consumers.”

Beyond its spacial capabilities, nuclear waste is miniscule in size. A person’s entire lifetime’s worth of electricity, strictly from nuclear energy, amounts to waste roughly the size of a Coke can. From there, nuclear waste goes into dry cask storage, where it is kept in a small area and is monitored and controlled.

In comparison, a person using strictly coal produces 77 tons of carbon dioxide in a lifetime. It is then released into our planet’s atmosphere, contributing to a climate crisis that threatens our very existence.

Nuclear meltdown incidents are always a possibility but are rare. However, the safety of nuclear power plants has advanced dramatically since the cases of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. In fact, the cause of last year’s Fukushima Daiichi disaster had more to do with negligent geographical placement than anything else.

The last essential term in understanding nuclear energy’s importance is portfolio, which refers to the fact climate change is such a serious matter that we have to do everything, simultaneously, to combat it.

Nuclear energy is no be-all cure, and it certainly has its risks, but they are miniscule compared to the climate chaos that will ensue if we do not reform our current energy policies. At the very least, we should embrace nuclear energy as a temporary alternative to fossil fuels while the transition to a more renewable-based energy economy is being developed.

In any case, nuclear energy’s undeserved stigma is something that will simply have to evaporate as climate change becomes more readily apparent and accepted. Let’s just hope that by then, it’s not too late.

The new ordinance will force San Francisco businesses to swap plastic for paper and start charging customers 10 cents per bag. Customers will also receive 10 cents off for each bag they bring in. Eateries are exempt until July 2013 due to food safety and hygiene.

The San Francisco State U. bookstore will not be affected by the ordinance because their bags are biodegradable, said Husam Erciyes, the Bookstore’s director of strategic projects and marketing. The Bookstore also offers reusable bags for 99 cents.

“I’ve never seen an institution like this University, or a city like this striving to improve our quality of life,” said SFSU broadcast and electronic communication arts student Joseph Stewart. “It’s mind-blowing to say the least, and I’m glad to be here to see it firsthand.”

Janate Qutami, manager at the Village Market and Pizza said the demand for bags is little, unless the items are either heavy or a substantial amount. She said students should be encouraged to carry around eco-friendly shopping bags.

“I like it when they bring their own bags, and I hope everyone else does it too,” Qutami said.

]]>http://uwire.com/2012/10/01/san-francisco-plastic-bag-ban-goes-into-effect-today/feed/0Column: The new wave of nuclear powerhttp://uwire.com/2012/09/28/column-the-new-wave-of-nuclear-power/
http://uwire.com/2012/09/28/column-the-new-wave-of-nuclear-power/#commentsFri, 28 Sep 2012 14:15:23 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=143016In the United States there are 65 running nuclear power plants. There have been no new facilities built since construction of the final reactor began in 1977. That means the youngest of these facilities is approaching its 30th birthday. Sounds like it’s time for an upgrade.

Only recently have plans for new nuclear facilities been drawn up, but these projects are still only in the preliminary stages of planning. Nuclear power provides about 20 percent of our nation’s electrical energy, and it is my firm opinion our goal should be to increase this number. I’m sure many of you are sitting over lunch shaking your head in disagreement. You may be thinking of the disasters at Fukushima or Chernobyl as proof nuclear energy is not safe, when in fact the meltdown of these facilities can be attributed to poor design. Just look online and you will find plenty of reliable sources outlining the causes of these meltdowns. However, I’m not here to change your mind about nuclear energy. Instead, I am here to introduce you to the up and coming nuclear reactor: The thorium-powered molten-salt reactor (MSR).

In an MSR, liquid thorium, a radioactive element, replaces uranium as the main fuel source of the reactor. The benefits of this are immeasurable. Thorium is four times more abundant than uranium, and the mining of this fuel is minimized by the large stockpiles. In fact, Thorium is plentiful enough to satisfy the energy demands of the U.S. for thousands of years. One pound of thorium can produce as much power as 300 pounds of uranium or nearly 3.5 million pounds of coal. This means less waste than current nuclear facilities, and since this waste is less radioactive it will only remain hazardous for a few hundred years compared to the tens of thousands of years uranium waste remains radioactive. For those of you concerned with nuclear weapons, you can breathe easy. Thorium is even harder to weaponize than uranium, which is pretty difficult to do in the first place.

Thorium plants can be much smaller than current nuclear facilities in both size and power production. Currently, nuclear facilities are generally built further away from large cities to minimize the potential damage of a worst case scenario meltdown. Since thorium is already in a molten state, the chance of a meltdown occurring is slim to none. Because of this, smaller facilities can be built closer to cities, eliminating a large portion of the energy lost due to transmission and bringing us cleaner, more affordable energy.

With the combination of safety features, new designs and the physical properties of thorium, nuclear power plants of the future will become even safer. If this quells the fear of reactor failure, widespread use of these plants could usher in a new era of energy production. With no greenhouse gas emissions, safe production and disposal methods and cheap, reliable power, there can be a significant reduction in the amount of coal-burning plants and other less-clean forms of energy production, thus helping the environment.

If you’re thinking, ‘Yeah, that’s great, but this is all theoretical,’ then think again my friend. In the 1960s, a thorium-powered MSR was built in Tennessee and ran for a total of 22,000 hours. We’re talking about a live reactor built and run by engineers. That’s some promising evidence MSRs could be the next best thing.

Now that I’ve got you anticipating the arrival of the first commercial MSR, I have some bad news: These facilities probably won’t be around in the near future. The amount of funding and planning for such a nuclear facility is at a minimum. Don’t expect to see one of these plants until after 2030. That being said, there is only room for improvement. Thorium MSRs may be the (theoretical) energy of the future today, but the sky is still the limit for energy production possibilities.

Depending on what news you were reading, Aug. 27 might be a strong indicator as to whom you will vote for come November. The opening day of the Republican National Convention, President Barack Obama announced he finalized his plan to raise Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency to 54.5 mpg by 2025.

In the works since 2009, by the end of 2012 automakers are to have an average fleet fuel economy of 28.7 mpg; currently, they all are exceeding that standard at 28.9 mpg. Vehicle gas emissions are estimated to drop 50 percent while reducing fuel consumption by approximately 40 percent by 2025. According to the White House, $1.7 trillion (or as Obama puts it, “that’s trillion, with a ‘t.’”) will be saved by families in gas costs alone and $8,000 through the lifetime of each vehicle. By 2016 the industry is planned to be up to an average of 35.5 mpg.

Obama, alongside all major automaker CEOs, stated in 2011: “This agreement on fuel standards represents the single-most important step we’ve ever taken as a nation to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. … The companies here today have endorsed our plan to continue increasing the mileage on their cars and trucks over the next 15 years. We’ve set an aggressive target, and the companies here are stepping up to the plate.”

Mind you, this was an agreement struck between the Obama Administration and automakers, as Obama put it: “This agreement was arrived at without legislation. You are all demonstrating what can happen when people put aside differences — these folks are competitors, you’ve got labor and business, but they decided, we’re going to work together to achieve something important and lasting for the country.”

A nonprofit organization called Ceres was teamed up with Citi Investment Research to conduct a study to assess the economic implications of such a massive plan. The first thing that was noticed was that “higher standards mean higher profits.” It also found that Obama’s plan would lead to 484,000 new jobs in 49 states.

Walter McManus, research professor at Oakland U., analyzed the data. He found that by 2020, $2.44 billion will be brought into U.S. automakers just because of the increased standards and that all automakers will see an increase of $4.76 billion. He also proclaimed all American automotive industries will then become more competitive internationally, which is important for our need to start selling more goods overseas.

Those who claim the technology is not there are simply misinformed. Mitt Romney’s campaign representative Andrea Saul said: “Gov. Romney opposes the extreme standards that President Obama has imposed, which will limit the choices available to American families. … The president tells voters that his regulations will save them thousands of dollars at the pump but always forgets to mention that the savings will be wiped out by having to pay thousands of dollars more upfront for unproven technology that they may not even want.”

Alan Baum of Baum & Associates (a business that provides research and analysis for the automotive and related industries) says: “There is a whole variety of technology to meet the standard. … And the primary method will be the internal combustion engine. The automakers understand that and they have technology to allow for that.” He stressed that the improvement will not remove any well-selling vehicles from the fleets, including high end sports cars.

Dan Meszler of Meszler engineering says that the cost of the automotive technologies would be outweighed heavily by the savings consumers make at the pump. “The break-even point is about $1.50 a gallon,” he says, according to his calculations. Which, in my opinion, we will never see again. He went on to say, “What [the Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency] does is floats all boats.”

Some might argue, myself included, that a 54.5 mpg average standard is unattainable in 15 years time. But that argument is moot because any standard increase will be beneficial for this economy, all families and the environment.

Not only has Romney stated his disapproval of this plan, but he has stated he will do what he can to reverse it should he become president. The greatest thing you can do to help with this issue is either vote for a reelection of Obama or do what you can to convince Romney of the dangers of reversing the Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency plan.

I am proud to be a part of a university that goes through such great practice in becoming more energy efficient. Supporting not just Obama’s plan but this trend is incredibly important — and after being informed of the facts and numbers, it becomes a no-brainer.

]]>http://uwire.com/2012/09/21/column-even-without-reaching-54-5-mpg-fuel-economy-improvements-a-good-thing/feed/0Column: The power of Pigovian taxeshttp://uwire.com/2012/09/17/column-the-power-of-pigovian-taxes/
http://uwire.com/2012/09/17/column-the-power-of-pigovian-taxes/#commentsMon, 17 Sep 2012 13:26:22 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=141493If you’ve filled up at the pump recently, you probably were reminded how much it costs to drive. But all the gas, insurance, repairs and other things you pay for are not the only costs of driving. Your contribution to traffic congestion places cost on other drivers, your wear and tear on the roads puts cost on taxpayers, and cost is born by the environment due to the pollution from your car.

These are three of the many examples of the external costs of driving, or what economists call negative externalities. It was first recommended in 1920 by Arthur Pigou, an economist from the University of Cambridge, that negative externalities be taxed to internalize the costs. Pigovian taxes are a way of making individuals themselves pay for the costs they place on others. This eponymous form of taxation is now supported by economists as diverse as Paul Krugman and Alan Greenspan. Conservative and liberal economists alike widely favor Pigovian taxes, especially on carbon emissions and gasoline. We just need our politicians to follow their economic advisors.

President Barack Obama recently announced mandates for dramatic increases in the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards, but this is economically harmful. A 2007 study published in Economic Inquiry found that an 11 cent increase in the gas tax would conserve the same amount of fuel as a 3.0 mpg increase in the CAFE standards. More importantly, it found that the increase in CAFE standards would have a welfare cost 14 times greater than the tax increase. Many other studies have corroborated the finding that paradoxically, gasoline taxes are the less expensive way to conserve fuel.

The problem with fuel efficiency standards is that they do not change consumer preferences. Consumers will have little, if any, new incentive to be fuel efficient. The new standards force automakers to manufacture vehicles that the market is not demanding, which increases the price on new vehicles. With higher prices on new cars, consumers will shift to buy used cars, and this won’t accomplish any fuel reduction because used cars are not affected by increasing fuel standards.

Energy policy needs to affect consumer behavior in order to reduce the usage of energy. When the price of gasoline rises, drivers get creative. They carpool, use mass transportation, buy a more fuel-efficient vehicle, walk or bike and even move closer to work. Numerous studies and extensive empirical data show strong correlation between gas price and consumption per capita in developed countries. Consider how often gas prices are on the news. One can think of few other things for which people watch the price so closely.

If gasoline prices were higher, consumers would find it financially rational to buy a fuel-efficient car, and they wouldn’t do it solely by the good graces of their sympathy for the environment. The American Ford Fiesta gets 33 miles per gallon fuel economy. However, in the UK, where gasoline taxes are approximately $4 per gallon, Ford produces a version of the Fiesta that gets nearly 72 miles to the gallon. The government is distorting the market with CAFE standards, forcing auto manufacturers to sell products people aren’t demanding, the result of which is higher prices on all vehicles. Higher gasoline taxes are a less invasive way to alter market demand by making it a financially beneficial decision to buy a fuel-efficient car. If consumers actually want more fuel-efficient cars, as they would with higher gas prices, CAFE standards become altogether futile.

America’s problem with the rest of the energy crisis is similar. The debate rages over how to force the economy to use “green” types of energy sources, and the response is often subsidies. Because every major form of energy production is subsidized in the US — oil, coal, gas, nuclear, wind and more — the net result is all energy is less expensive. Just as with gasoline, people consume much more energy with lower prices. While there is much discourse about energy independence and its national security implications, the government is aiding and abetting the problem by promoting the use of energy.

If energy were more expensive, people would have a greater incentive to use it sparingly. Businesses would make their products more energy efficient for consumers who are watching their utility bills. It would be more profitable to research and invest in innovation for energy efficiency and conservation. Yet, we are making energy less expensive and consequentially decreasing private investment in innovative energy technology.

If you tax something, you get less of it. This economic phenomenon should teach a simple lesson: We should focus on taxing things that are bad for society not things that are good for society. Our current tax system focuses largely on taxing income, which is something society wants. Pigovian taxation would be even more powerful in increasing market efficiency and bipartisan in agreement if it coincided with decreased taxes on things that are good for society, such as income.

Just as a large majority of economists proudly support higher gasoline taxes, I believe that a majority of politicians would too, if it weren’t for the public affixation to measure their performance by the price at the pump. The next time there’s a spike in the price of gas, there’s sure to be a lot of pessimism in the media, but economists everywhere will be smiling.

]]>http://uwire.com/2012/09/17/column-the-power-of-pigovian-taxes/feed/0Column: Our personal American argument with oil resourceshttp://uwire.com/2012/09/14/column-our-personal-american-argument-with-oil-resources/
http://uwire.com/2012/09/14/column-our-personal-american-argument-with-oil-resources/#commentsFri, 14 Sep 2012 14:01:38 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=141303Oil is the energy that allows modern society to thrive. Unfortunately, it is non-renewable, meaning once it runs out, it’s gone. In 2010, Russia discovered a massive oil field in East Siberia. The deposit was said to hold at least 150 million metric tons of oil (around 1.1 billion barrels), and for Russia, the world’s leading oil exporter, this was certainly a boon. The world rejoiced at this new discovery, while simultaneously decrying oil and its hazards to the planet, pollution and energy efficiency. The United States, in fact, seems to be the prime example of; this two-faced argument. At the same time that we call for more efficient, clean energies, we are elated to know that there is more oil in the world to sustain us for a little longer.

The reality is that oil is not going to be in the future much longer, or at least it cannot be if the human race is going to survive the way it has thus far. Oil is like an infection to us. Instead of seeking treatment, we chose to ignore the problem, despite knowing that oil will run out. We consume it rapidly: the United States holds only 5 percent of the world’s populace, but consumes 25 percent of its oil. On a daily basis, that average American uses more than twice the oil of those in the European Union, and every year our country consumes 7.6 billion barrels. That makes Russia’s discovery seem a bit less massive, I suppose. That’s all right, though, because while Russia exports 6 percent of its total oil to the Americas (with 5 percent going only to the United States), it provides only 4 percent of our total oil imports. So we basically import more oil than Russia can export, from all over the world.

There is, however, good news. Today, energy is even more at the forefront of everyone’s mind, especially in a political sense, and several steps have been taken to foster alternate energy, such as tax incentives and the Energy Star program, which labels devices that use 20 percent to 30 percent less energy than is required by government standards. Even our rising gas prices, which are constantly lamented, are a positive sign of change. European markets saw the prices we are facing (around $4 a gallon) long ago, and this forced them to have tighter regulations on vehicle efficiency, which is necessary to wean us off oil. After all, automobiles in general account for 60 percent of oil use, with most of that being personal vehicles. As prices go up, there is more and more reason to look to improving sustainable, alternative energy.

However, the fight for freedom from oil is a personal one; as we have seen, there is little the government can actually do when it comes to demanding better technology and cleaner fuel from companies that rely on oil. People naturally resist change, and we as a society have been in the grip of fossil fuels for so long that their depletion seems a distant problem. “Oh, leave that to the next generation,” we seem to be saying, as our predecessors said of us. But it is within our power, individually, to advance technologies and implement smart energy-saving procedures. Whether it is something costly that will save you in the end, like buying solar panels, an electric car or fuel cells, or simple things like relying more on natural light, putting bubble wrap over your windows in winter to save on heat or using PVC pipes and glass bottles to make a greenhouse, it doesn’t matter. In an age when the inner workings of technology and inventions are unknown to many, everyone should aspire to be a maker. Do things that will affect your life in an eco-friendly way. If enough people do that, we won’t need the government to tell us one day that we need to invest in green energy. We will tell them that, as a government by and for the people, and they will listen to us.

Stanford recently published a systematic review, which is a review of research in a specific area, detailing what has been found about the benefits and risks of organic foods.

The study has undergone controversy since the publication about the validity of the methods used for the review.

The study, which was published in the Sept. 4 Issue of annals of internal medicine, found there is not strong evidence that organic foods are more nutritious than conventional foods.

Dr. Suzy Weems, professor and chair in the Baylor U. department of family and consumer sciences, said the findings from Stanford were consistent with previous findings regarding organic food.

“The findings at Stanford were not at all, in my mind, surprising because we have known for quite awhile that the nutrient content in foods that were properly produced, organically and using the more conventional methods, if those foods were harvested and taken care of carefully, the nutrient content was not significantly different,” Weems said.

Weems said the difference between organic and conventionally-produced food lies in the techniques used when growing the foods.

“Organically produced means they have been grown with little to no synthetic fertilizers and they don’t have insecticides,” Weems said. “They really have to be certified as organic producers.”

The use of pesticides and insecticides was mentioned in the Stanford study. In a sept. 3 Press release by Stanford University, studies involving groups of children on organic versus conventional diets showed slightly lower levels of pesticides appearing in children with organic diets versus conventional diets, but it was unclear what the exact cause was.

“I think the statement they made really needs to be highlighted and that was that perhaps the largest amount of pesticides that children are exposed to is not through the food, but in the environment,” weems said.

The overall agreement among the authors of the study was that people should aim for overall healthier diets.

Weems agreed, saying she never advises people for or against organic food, which is generally more expensive than regular food, but leaves the decision up to them.

“I really stress the idea that it’s important to eat fruits and vegetables, whole grains, nutrient-dense foods like lean meats and things,” Weems said. “It’s much more important to have those in the diet every day than to not be able to afford something.”

“Sometimes I buy organic, but when i’m short on money, I’ll get regular because it has about the same nutritional content,” medina said.

Local organizations, like world hunger relief incorporated, also stress other qualities of food besides whether or not it’s organically produced.

“For us, there is a lot about our growing system that are more important than organic foods,” said the associate director of World Hunger relief Incorporated Matt Hess. “We consider things like grass-pasture-fed, locally produced more important than organic.”

Hess said world hunger relief incorporated use methods similar to organic methods. They say they have also sold some organic products like pecans, but that locally, educating people about other techniques like grass-fed and pasture-fed produce is more necessary.

Weems said there will always be people who prefer organic produce, but that she expects the strong current emphasis on organic products to level out.

“In my opinion, a lot do this because it’s kind of an ‘in thing’ to do not because they’ve done the research to say maybe this is the better thing to do,” weems said.

The press release recommends that people do their own research on the benefits and risks of organic versus conventional and come to their own decision about what they want to consume and what they want to feed their families.

]]>http://uwire.com/2012/09/13/study-finds-organic-food-not-always-the-healthier-choice/feed/0Column: Drilling efforts would quell rising gas priceshttp://uwire.com/2012/08/30/column-drilling-efforts-would-quell-rising-gas-prices/
http://uwire.com/2012/08/30/column-drilling-efforts-would-quell-rising-gas-prices/#commentsThu, 30 Aug 2012 19:14:15 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=139843An article released by the Associated Press last week reported that drivers have been paying record prices for gasoline. The national average for Aug. 20 was $3.72 per gallon, up from $3.58 a gallon in 2011. Judging by these numbers, we can observe that the cost of gas has risen dramatically, leaving many students posing the question, “When, if ever, will prices begin to go down and stay down?” Before we can discuss how we lower costs, let’s look at what determines them.

A myriad of factors come into play influencing day-to-day fluctuations in gas prices, such as speculation, daily refinery output, geopolitical events, etc. However, the greatest factor that affects cost is supply and demand. If demand is greater than the amount of fuel being supplied, then naturally prices will increase. If supply is greater than demand, prices will decrease. At this time, demand is greater than the supply. The U.S. is only one of many industrialized nations, much like China and India, that consumes large amounts of gasoline every day. We are competing in a globalized economy. In order to drive costs down we need to increase the supply.

While the U.S. is a major exporter of crude and refined oil, we are trying to help feed the voracious appetite of growing nations all over the globe. That being understood, we need to increase domestic drilling in areas like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the untouched oil sands in Utah and Alaska, develop new and more efficient ways of harvesting existing oil and gas reserves and continue the ongoing search for more untapped sources at home and abroad. An increase in production will help to meet existing demand. In addition, pursuing the above measures at home will produce an additional much-needed consequence: jobs!

With unemployment still hovering above 8 percent and underemployment above 17 percent, the American public needs a way to make a buck. An increase in oil production will dramatically help to reduce the number of Americans out of work. To see an example of this, we can look to North Dakota.

In 2008, an ongoing period of extraction from the Bakken oil shale formation began. Since then we have seen an economic explosion in North Dakota, giving it the lowest unemployment rate in the nation. The increased production has brought a huge influx of people searching for jobs. In fact, the Associated Press said the population of the city of Williston has doubled to 30,000 residents in less than a decade. The average salary of a resident of Williston has increased from $32,000 in 2006 to more than $70,000, and the unemployment rate is at 1 percent while, astonishingly, there are still 3,000 unfilled jobs in the city. The prosperity has been so widespread that a measure was placed on the ballot this past June that would have eliminated property taxes across the state.

Now, the mainstream media has been trying to point to the stresses the migration of workers has created such as: rent inflation, overcrowding, strains on infrastructure and the like. In response, I would like to say that this is just a round of problems that will attract entrepreneurs who will build more housing, more restaurants and more roads to meet the greater demand, therefore creating even more jobs. To most Americans just struggling to make ends meet, these sound like good problems to have.

Now, imagine economic transformation just like that on a national scale. We could literally turn our economy around overnight achieving an unheard of level of prosperity for most Americans young and old alike. That, my friends, is real change we can believe in. The only question I have now is, why has our current president worked to stand in the way of so many opportunities like this? Why has he worked to limit our prosperity by encouraging more regulation, pushing for drilling restrictions and denying permits to build pipelines, i.e. the Keystone XL? Let’s tell him how we feel, UCF. We need real leadership for America. Vote for prosperity on Nov. 6. Vote Republican.

]]>http://uwire.com/2012/08/30/column-drilling-efforts-would-quell-rising-gas-prices/feed/0Column: New wave of American energy production touts mixed economic benefitshttp://uwire.com/2012/07/18/column-new-wave-of-american-energy-production-touts-mixed-economic-benefits/
http://uwire.com/2012/07/18/column-new-wave-of-american-energy-production-touts-mixed-economic-benefits/#commentsWed, 18 Jul 2012 14:56:32 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=138396The U.S. economy added just 80,000 jobs in June, a third-straight month of weak hiring. The unemployment rate was unchanged at 8.2 percent, but it would have been much worse without the boom in domestic oil and gas production.

There are actual labor shortages in expanding oil and gas areas of the U.S. like North Dakota’s Bakken Shale region. There the business activity from thousands of new fracking wells have unemployment near 3 percent. Those wells force high pressure liquids into shale layers, releasing formerly trapped oil and gas deposits. This occurs beneath a mile or more of rock layer without damage to shallow fresh water supplies.

In northeastern Ohio, moribund since steel mills closed in the 1970s, a $650 million steel mill is being erected for V&M USA Corporation to produce steel pipe and other equipment. The mill’s operation will create 350 long-term jobs by the end of 2012, more than doubling V&M’s local workforce. Nearby in Carroll County, a new 350-acre industrial park is ready for oil and gas related projects. The state of Ohio is expecting 200,000 new jobs by 2018 from the Utica Shale which underlies most of eastern Ohio.

The growing replacement of coal by natural gas for U.S. electric power is good news for the environment and jobs. Environmental Protection Agency rules which restrict coal’s mercury and sulfur emissions are forcing that shift to natural gas, now plentiful from this new fracking drilling technology. Increased coal exports are replacing a declining domestic coal market. From a 50 percent share of the U.S. electric power market five years ago, coal supplied just 42 percent in 2011, and it is now below 40 percent. A rise in natural gas use from 20 percent to near 30 percent of our electric utilities is making up most of the difference. At the same time, wind and solar power have risen from 1 percent to 3 to 4 percent of U.S. electric energy supply.

Overall, the expansion in the oil and natural gas industries has created 500,000 well-paying new jobs in the past decade. The expansion is not slowing down as several large shale reservoirs are now productive in various parts of the U.S. Oil production has grown by 10 percent since 2008, and the import share of U.S. oil consumption has dropped to about 45 percent from 60 percent in 2005. This trend will continue, and a new study by Wood Mackenzie reports that oil and gas production could create an additional one million new U.S. jobs by 2018.

The touted jobs future in the “green” sector is limited by its cost per kilowatt hour. Wind and solar are at least twice as expensive as electricity produced with natural gas. A study for Spain by King Juan Carlos University showed that for every subsidized wind or solar job, more than two jobs were lost in energy consuming industries because of increased electric costs. Some of that Spanish production was moved to France with its lower-cost nuclear energy.

There is an entirely new reality with U.S. energy production, consumption and imports. New oil and gas supplies are emerging, and fossil fuel demand is being limited by conservation and efficiency. It is too soon to talk of energy independence, but oil imports are declining to the point that most of our oil need could soon be met from friendly Western Hemisphere sources.

As Daniel Yergin noted recently in The New York Times, “What is striking is this great revival in oil and gas production in the United States, with wide impacts on jobs, economic development and the competitiveness of American industry. This new reality requires a new way of thinking about America’s improving energy position and how to facilitate this growth in an environmentally sound way — recognizing the benefits this will bring in an era of economic uncertainty.”

Let’s hope that our government gets the message and supports energy programs that replace imports with American jobs.

Recent discoveries in samples taken from the Gulf Coast’s white sands have shown that the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill affected more than just the animals visible to humans.

Auburn U.’s Molette Biology Laboratory for Environmental and Climate Change has performed studies that show microscopic organisms in the Gulf ’s sand underwent dramatic shifts in their environment after the oil spill.

The communities of organisms affected are not only responsible for providing nutrients to sediment and the foundation of the sand, but also are a vital part of the of the food chain in their environment.

Ken Halanych, AU professor of biological sciences, co-wrote the study and has been studying the effects from the oil spill since it began in 2010.

“We’ve been looking at the smaller organisms that live between sand grains,” Halanych said. “The larger organisms can leave contaminated areas, but the smaller organisms can’t get up and swim away so we’ve been trying to see how the oil has impacted them.”

According to the Molette Biology Lab’s study, the diversity of organisms in the affected microscopic communities is vast. Bacteria, nematodes, copepods, protists and fungi were all found in the samples taken.

The AU Department of Geology and Geography are also involved in research concerning the oil spill. Dr. Ming-Kuo Lee, professor of hydrogeology and a team of graduate students found that oil contamination is not limited to surface water.

Instead, elevated organic carbon contents settle into the sediment long after the oil contaminated surface water had evaporated.

Beach towns and resorts on the Gulf Coast are highly dependent on the seafood industry and have been identified as the best places to find fresh fish and shrimp in the South.

Since the oil spill, some locals have abandoned the thought of eating food from the Gulf and are encouraging others to do the same.

Carmen Potts, an organic produce farmer, once owned a family-run organic seafood restaurant in a popular beach town on the Gulf Coast.

After the oil spill, Potts had no choice but to close the restaurant when the number of tourists plummeted in 2010.

According to Potts, she can’t blame people for not wanting to visit and eat the seafood caught from the Gulf of Mexico.

“I haven’t eaten a single fish or shrimp from the Gulf since the oil spill,” Potts said. “People from here should know that we have no idea how contaminated the food could be.”

“I don’t want to find out 30 years down the road that the seafood everyone keeps eating has gotten them sick, but I’m not taking the risk,” Potts said. “My family and I refuse to eat it anymore until we find out more.”

Unfortunately, there’s no clear evidence that the seafood from the Gulf is toxic or safe to eat.

Halanych and Lee’s studies did not focus on contamination of shrimp and fish, so if there is some hidden toxin in the seafood, it still remains unknown.

]]>http://uwire.com/2012/07/16/studies-show-previously-unseen-effects-of-2010-bp-oil-spill/feed/0Editorial: California bullet train budget is state suicidehttp://uwire.com/2012/07/12/editorial-california-bullet-train-budget-is-state-suicide/
http://uwire.com/2012/07/12/editorial-california-bullet-train-budget-is-state-suicide/#commentsThu, 12 Jul 2012 17:44:48 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=138219It is slower than a speeding bullet, less powerful than an airplane and can leap small distances in half the time. It is a waste, it is a pain — no! It is the bullet train.

Four years have passed since California voters approved the construction of a bullet train, which will connect Los Angeles to San Francisco.

The once $10 billion project will take commuters between the two major metropolitan cities faster than their automobiles.

However, due to runaway costs, the high-speed locomotive budget has gone off the rails and is now a $68 billion project.

This is more money than any voter could of imagined spending on a bullet train back in 2008.

Not to mention, it will not be completed until 2030.

With its massive scale and incredible costs, it has taken four years to begin laying down the project’s tracks.

The California Legislature recently voted in favor of the project’s first step, a 130-mile stretch from Madera to Bakersfield.

This stretch is less than a fourth of the promised 800-mile railway, and it is paid for by a federal grant.

It is tough to swallow the ballooning of the bullet train’s budget.

As convenient the idea of a bullet train connecting California is, it should not be at the forefront of our state’s concerns.

As students, it is a brutal stab to our chests as our Legislature continues to push forward with this expensive train while making cuts to our education.

Also, the timing for this project is terrible.

California currently faces a huge amount of debt, and to compensate for that, we’ve faced more and more cuts to higher education.

A bullet train system may work better on the East Coast, where people rely more on public transportation.

But on the West Coast, we drive our cars everywhere; and if we’re not driving, we’re flying.

With the bullet train’s price point and travel time virtually the same as air travel, the idea of the bullet train is less favorable, unless you have a fear of flying, of course.

Then maybe traveling through the heart of California at super-fast speeds sounds appealing.

But should we really be spending $68 billion to coax the few who are too terrified to fly? No.

As important as it is for us to continue to improve our public transit system in California, this isn’t the project we need.

Improving travel in and out of our major cities is more important than creating fast travel in between them.

These are projects that can be done at a much lower cost than a bullet train and will not take as long to complete.

By 2030, who knows? We may have a faster and more efficient way of travel.

We should just ask ourselves, are fast trains really the transportation of our future?

The massive cost and length of completion has really taken the steam out of the bullet train.

The excitement is gone, and once the entire project is approved Californians will be feeling the pain in their wallets.

For years, we will have to wait to ride this super-fast train.

The only question to ask about then is, will Californians be able to enjoy a good road trip anymore?

]]>http://uwire.com/2012/07/12/editorial-california-bullet-train-budget-is-state-suicide/feed/0Editorial: Baking & frackinghttp://uwire.com/2012/07/02/editorial-baking-fracking/
http://uwire.com/2012/07/02/editorial-baking-fracking/#commentsMon, 02 Jul 2012 17:22:54 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=137940Does baking a cake make a mess in the kitchen? No, not literally. The chemical changes that occur when cake batter sits in a hot oven do not directly cause spills, greasy counter tops and other reasons for clean up.

Most bakers, however, will respond to that question about a mess more broadly. They will tell you “baking a cake” starts when they line up flour, eggs and sugar on a counter, ends when they confront a sink full of dirty dishes and definitely makes a mess.

Consider similar questions about the purported mess resulting from hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Fracking is a method of natural gas extraction, which involves injecting millions of gallons of water, sand and chemicals into soft, shale rock underground.

To geologists, “fracking” is the isolated act of fracturing the shale for the purposes of gas extraction. But to so many others ­­— lawmakers, regulators and landowners, especially — “fracking” begins when a geologist instructs an energy company to drill a fracking well on someone’s property, ends when the company leaves the same property and definitely makes a mess.

This summer, the Governor of New York is reconsidering a 2008 moratorium on fracking in parts of New York state. As a result, protestors have once more thrown the question of fracking’s consequences into the national spotlight and tied up Albany phone lines. The protestors express fears that fracking will cause irreversible harm to groundwater. To the protestors, their concerns about fracking focus on both its before-and-after consequences ­­—­­ including ground spills and mishandling of wastewater.

Where does U. Texas fit into this picture of cake-baking, fracking and New York protestors?

Start with the UT Energy Institute, which was founded in 2009 “on the notion that colleges and universities are uniquely positioned to conduct independent and impartial scientific research,” according to its website. The Energy Institute aims to “inject science and fact-based analysis into what is often a contentious dialogue, and in doing so bring clarity to the debate that shapes public policy on energy issues,” the website says.

In February, the Energy Institute published a study about fracking and distributed an accompanying press release bearing the headline, “Study Shows No Evidence of Groundwater Contamination from Hydraulic Fracturing”. The study specifically argues that the baseline data available about the groundwater sources fracking wells are purported to have contaminated is too limited. Therefore, the study argues, researchers cannot draw conclusions that fracking caused contamination.

Charles “Chip” Groat, a geology professor and the lead researcher on the study, said that researchers defined fracking in the isolated sense — apparently he means not in the broadly defined (as in cake-baking from flour spills to dirty dishes) sense.

Read in its entirety, the study’s most compelling point calls for more research and more restraint: “[T]he most rational path forward … is to develop fact-based regulations of shale gas development based on what is currently known about the issues and at the same time, continue research where need for information to support controls in the future.”

But by using the headline “no evidence of groundwater contamination” in its press release, the Energy Institute oversimplified its own study’s conclusions and thereby contributed to the media’s misreporting about fracking.

The fracking debate needs clarity not oversimplification. The oversimplified headline of the Energy Institute’s press release errs on the side of favoring the fracking industry’s viewpoint. Notably, UT gets significant funding from companies with stakes in the natural gas industry.

Review of news stories published, broadcast or posted after the Energy Institute’s press release in February suggests that the headline dominated what reporters told the public. Most of the media coverage of the Energy Institute’s study failed to mention its finer points. For example, the point that better regulations are needed for processes related to natural gas extraction. CNN, Fox News, The Houston Chronicle and the Natural Gas Alliance all ran stories or emphasized a quote that parroted the press release’s headline. Notably, the Fort Worth Star Telegram captured the subtleties of the study, but only in a second-day story.

The Energy Institute’s study cost $270,000 to produce, according to a University spokesperson. The Institute’s $1.3 million operating budget, most of which comes from the state’s Available University Fund, paid for most of the study’s costs. Some funding for the study came from individual colleges, including $100,000 from the College of Engineering. Natural gas companies did not contribute directly to the funding of the study. There is no evidence that the researchers were influenced or conscious of any industry funding. But could all of the researchers be entirely unaware of UT’s money from natural gas companies?

Regulated and determined to be safe, fracking could be a boon for this state’s economy, and an answer to the worrisome questions about U.S. reliance on foreign oil. But by releasing a study in a hurry with an accompanying press release that ballyhooed conclusions about fracking not contaminating groundwater, the Energy Institute contributed to public confusion about the fracking industry. Within the realm of possibility: Further research will show fracking, or at least fracking-related processes, have environmental consequences. By coming out so hurriedly and with a press-release headline so strongly overstating the conclusions drawn by the study, the Energy Institute muddied the waters.

A group of 22 researchers from around the world are warning of imminent and irreversible changes to the Earth’s biosphere resulting from a combination of human population growth, mass consumption and extensive environmental destruction.

The researchers’ report, published Thursday in “Nature” magazine, was headed by Anthony Barnosky, professor of integrative biology at U. California-Berkeley. As a collaboration among researchers from a multitude of disciplines, the report emphasizes the possibility of a biological state shift.

Although today’s conditions are caused largely by human activities, episodes of widespread ecological change may occur similar to changes that took place during the transition from the Ice Age 20,000 years ago, according to the report.

“It really will be a new world, biologically, at that point,” Barnosky said in a statement published on the UC Berkeley NewsCenter. “The data suggests that there will be a reduction in biodiversity and severe impacts on much of what we depend on to sustain our quality of life, including, for example, fisheries, agriculture, forest products and clean water. This could happen within just a few generations.”

Campus environmental science, policy and management professor John Harte, another author of the report, has been doing research in Colorado, where he has seen the concept of tipping points in action. In a field experiment that has been running for the last 22 years, Harte has documented how the plant diversity of alpine meadows can be rapidly altered if exposed to constant warmth.

“The evidence in the paper comes from looking around at the world where people have come to see patterns and changes that are disrupting the natural order,” Harte said. “However, the paper is focused not just on individual ecosystems but on the whole planet. We’re looking at a global state shift.”

The report suggests a number of critical areas in which research should be focused to improve policy and guide legislation.

Campus Vice Chancellor for Research Graham Fleming said a development that has subsequently sprouted from the report is The Berkeley Initiative in Global Change Biology.

The focus of the initiative will be to forecast possible ecological and biological changes and understand how species have evolved, how fast they have evolved and where they have lived, according to Fleming.

“With funding from the Moore and Keck foundations, we’ll have over 100 scientists from a range of departments, including integrative biology, environmental science, policy and management and molecular cell biology as well as the College of Engineering working on this initiative,” Fleming said.

“We call for developing as fast as we can the capacity to predict what these changes will look like,” Harte, who will be leading one of five teams working under the initiative, said. “We can then develop policy recommendations that can contribute to the formation of legislation.”

Neo Martinez, another researcher who worked on the report, is head of the PEaCE Lab based in Berkeley and also emphasizes the importance of finding “root causes,” such as the reasons why humans make decisions like buying Hummer vehicles or giant houses.

“We can emphasize research solutions, but we also need social change,” Martinez said. “We need scientific change to bring attention to the public and individuals to realize and make better choices.”

]]>http://uwire.com/2012/06/11/report-warns-earth-may-be-approaching-an-environmental-tipping-point/feed/0Column: Human disregard plays into plastic bag banhttp://uwire.com/2012/05/30/column-human-disregard-plays-into-plastic-bag-ban/
http://uwire.com/2012/05/30/column-human-disregard-plays-into-plastic-bag-ban/#commentsWed, 30 May 2012 15:41:29 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=136541Los Angeles made history last week when it became the largest city to pass the much-discussed plastic bag ban, catalyzing the transition from a small-scale, grassroots movement to one that’s in the mainstream consciousness.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the L.A. City Council passed the ban with a sweeping 13-1 vote. Even with the hefty majority, the plastic bag ban must first go through a four-month environmental review period to officially be put into effect. The ban calls for large and small markets to phase out plastic bags during a six-month to one-year period. Paper bags will cost 10 cents each one year after the ban becomes active.

Opponents argue that the ban leads to job losses — a critical issue in this recovering economy — and serves as an inconvenience to shoppers and retailers alike. Opposition aside, however, there’s little denying that plastics are harmful to the environment, in large part because they do not biodegrade.

“Plastics are very long-lived products that could potentially have service over decades, and yet our main use of these lightweight, inexpensive materials are as single-use items that will go to the garbage dump within a year, where they’ll persist for centuries,” Richard Thompson, lead editor of the “Plastics, the Environment and Human Health” report, said according to Environmental Health News.

The plastic bag ban looks like a step in the right direction, as it encourages conservation and attempts to minimize harmful plastic pollution. But that’s where the problem lies — people are at fault for the ubiquity of plastic waste, not plastic bags themselves. Plastic bags have been made out to be the villains, when pollution is really the direct result of the human hand.

That’s not to say that people maliciously seek to litter our beaches or endanger wildlife by tossing plastic bags. It’s simply a matter of human carelessness, whether it occurs on a personal or industrial level. But this is the worst part about the ban — it has been created and put into law out of a need to engender environmental consciousness when this awareness should already be inherent.

Considering that plastic pollution affects businesses and customers alike, the plastic bag ban doesn’t serve a quick fix to pollution. Instead, societal attitudes toward the environment need to change, whether that means diligently recycling plastics at home or putting mechanisms into place at waste management companies. People need to motivate themselves to recycle and preserve; eco-friendly legislation shouldn’t have to tell them to do so.

We don’t need a Heal the Bay campaign or a dramatic commercial with Sarah McLachlan to inform us of the downsides of plastics and pollution. Keeping that in mind, awareness isn’t the crux of the issue here; it’s that people passively allow pollution without giving it a second thought. We have to ditch the passivity and use plastic bags responsibly, in the process keeping unnecessary waste out of our landfills.

Human carelessness is the issue here, not plastic bags, and the ban wouldn’t exist if people and companies treated plastic with the caution it deserves. But with such a fragile environment in our hands, we can no longer turn a blind eye.

]]>http://uwire.com/2012/05/30/column-human-disregard-plays-into-plastic-bag-ban/feed/0Column: The descent of Mannhttp://uwire.com/2012/05/11/column-the-descent-of-mann-2/
http://uwire.com/2012/05/11/column-the-descent-of-mann-2/#commentsFri, 11 May 2012 10:05:59 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=135734The Virginia Supreme Court ruled March 2nd against Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli and his renewed attempts to obtain access to the emails and documents used in the research of a former U. Virginia professor. Michael Mann — who was on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 and is a significant contributor to the theory of anthropomorphic, or man-made, global warming — received tax-payer funded grants from the years 1999 to 2005. Cuccinelli’s move to check Mann’s research engendered a good deal of backlash, both from the University and members of the scientific community. Many see Cuccinelli’s efforts as a kind of witch hunt, malicious and counterproductive. Cuccinelli, for his part, stated: “We were simply trying to review documents that are unquestionably state property to determine whether or not fraud had been committed.”

Many see the ruling as a victory for university research and the end of a protracted, uninformed attack on solid science. But some still doubt Mann and his research. Their reason? A few years ago, in late 2009, a well-publicized incident involving the hacking and subsequent leaking of climate scientists’ emails gave climate change skeptics room to maneuver.

Some of Mann’s emails were brought into question in the breach at the University of East Anglia. In one email, there is a mention of a “trick” that had been used by Mann to “hide the decline” in temperature over the years. Mann explained that the term “trick” in this case refers to a means of solving a problem. Some of the emails seemed to suggest that climate scientists were purposefully withholding information which did not support their theories about global warming. Those whose emails were hacked, and many who follow their work, were able to diffuse the situation and divert many of the accusations coming from climate change skeptics. The incident could not be entirely forgotten, though, and doubt still exists because of it.

In light of this, I find Mann’s response to Cuccinelli’s actions to be a bit confusing. If Mann is competent and confident in his research and findings, then why does he not welcome the closer look at his methods? If I were in Mann’s shoes, I would be more than happy to show those who questioned my work all that I had done to acquire my results. If Mann has nothing to hide, then Cuccinelli’s scrutiny would serve the purpose of helping to erase any doubt which remains from the East Anglia hacking from 2009. And while I would be one of the first to say I have a problem with Big Brother looking over the shoulder of anyone publishing his or her own research, Mann’s scientific investigation was funded by taxpayers. Furthermore, his legitimacy has, in the past, been called into question. That Cuccinelli was requesting to see what are, at least in part, state documents is not the outrage Mann supporters think it is.

Denying global warming is a costly venture for many scientists. Those who speak out often lose government funding for their research and are ridiculed by their peers for taking up the opposing argument. On the other side, there are those who believe that mankind is to blame for the rising temperatures, and who feel that something must be done, and soon, to save us from catastrophe. These individuals, in my experience, take it for granted that the problem and its consequences, as they see it, even exist. Their mindset is that the problem exists without a doubt and that detractors from this belief are wasting valuable time with superfluous argumentation.

I will not go as far as saying there has been no temperature change — it is hard to deny the data which suggests the increase in temperatures in recent years. But I am certainly unwilling to sign off on the anthropomorphic version of global warming without further discussion. Many scientists and climatologists dissent when it comes to the theory of man-made global warming. The strategy of believers, lately, has been to simply ignore those who challenge the idea of man-made global warming and point to the “consensus” reached by the entire scientific community saying it happened. Such a consensus is hard to come by in the scientific community and does not yet exist. As long as notable professionals around the world — such as Ivar Giaever, a Noble Prize winner and former member of the American Physical Society; Professor Richard Lindzen, an atmospheric physicist meteorology professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Professor Emeritus William Gray, who is well-known for his work in forecasting hurricanes — are challenging this idea, the debate should go on.

I say nothing critical of Mann’s research — he is a well-known and respected professional in his field. I merely point out that his approach to the debate, and the approach of those on his side, will not yield any progress. If the work he has done is accurate and honest, then there should be no danger in showing it. In fact, Mann should see Cuccinelli’s investigation as a chance to say: “Go ahead — check my resources. Everything I’ve done is verifiable and well-researched. These are the facts.” Mann should take pride in his work and use it, and the opportunity provided by Cuccinelli’s continued doubt, to legitimize his research and further prove his point. He has nothing to lose if he has nothing to hide.

The debate of organic versus conventional agriculture continues as a new study published by researchers at McGill U. and U. Minnesota concluded that while organic agriculture may not be able to produce enough food for the world, it will play an important role in minimizing environmental damage for the future.

The study found that certain crops like legumes and perennials, which include soybeans and fruits, have a similar output through both organic and conventional farming.

Overall, the study found that organic farming produces approximately 25 percent fewer crops than conventional farming. However, the study found that organic farms can produce just 13 percent less than conventional farms under the best circumstances.

Verena Seufert, one of the researchers from McGill U., said that perennial crops can do better organically because they grow more slowly and are less dependent than annual crops on external factors.

Conventional agriculture is seen as a threat because it can harm the environment by taking up water resources and by releasing greenhouse gases. People on the other side of the argument say organic farming on a large scale would be less productive because it would make food unaffordable for those with lower incomes around the world.

The world is currently producing enough food, Seufert said, but starvation continues because of distribution issues.

“The problems that we have today with so many people not having enough food is more a food access global system,” she said. “It does not depend on increased food production, but increased access to food.”

U. Oregon’s Urban Farm class educates students about the advantages of local farming and how they can get involved. The farm is led by Harper Keeler, a long-time advocate for organic food.

People need to be more connected to their food to understand where it comes from; Lane County residents only eat about four percent of their food from local sources, he said.

“There’s no appreciation for the problem,” he said. “We need people on the land to start understanding where it comes from. Until then, we won’t have the political willpower to make the changes that we need to make.”

Keeler spoke of the advantages of farming for the future health of the population.

“Working outside and growing stuff is going to have health benefits, mental benefits, environmental benefits,” he said. “All those things were lost with the unsettling of America upon industrialization.”

Tom Bettman, a longtime Urban Farm instructor, said organic farming could be plausible if there were a significantly smaller population.

“You need a population of about a billion. Right now, we’re feeding people on petroleum,” he said. “We’re burning fossil fuels to crank out enough food to feed about seven billion people.”

The study concluded that there should not be a mindset of either/or, but that a combination of organic and conventional farming will be the most beneficial for the world’s population.

“I think the solution that will feed the world more sustainably will not be only organic crops or conventional crops but will be a mixture of the two ideas,” Seufert said.

]]>http://uwire.com/2012/05/01/worlds-population-too-large-to-accomodate-urban-farming-new-study-finds/feed/0Coral reefs may survive changes in climatehttp://uwire.com/2012/04/29/coral-reefs-may-survive-changes-in-climate/
http://uwire.com/2012/04/29/coral-reefs-may-survive-changes-in-climate/#commentsSun, 29 Apr 2012 19:59:32 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=134506The future of the world’s coral reefs may not be as grim as we think. A recent study conducted by researchers at the James Cook U. in Australia took a look at the composition of various corals in the Great Barrier Reef and determined that the flexibility across species may allow corals to adapt to future changes in the ocean due to climate change.

A global increase in temperature as a result of the increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (mainly carbon dioxide), is projected to cause not only a warming of the world’s oceans, but also an increase in ocean acidification. The oceans act as carbon sinks, which means they absorb carbon at a faster rate than they emit it. Currently, oceans remove about 30 percent of anthropogenic carbon dioxide from the earth’s atmospheres each year.

However, with ever increasing rates of carbon dioxide emissions, the oceans can only swallow so much. A side effect of carbon sequestration is the production of carbonic acids, and the more carbon dioxide oceans take up, the quicker the acid is formed. As a result, the overall oceanic pH level decreases, which in turn decreases the calcium carbonate production of many coral forming organisms. Acidification affects both the organisms building reefs, as well as the reefs themselves.

Originally, the health of a coral reef was determined by “total coral cover.” However, the study’s detailed look into the coral composition of 35,000 different colonies within the Great Barrier Reef discovered another factor that influences the overall ability for corals to survive: the distribution and number of adaptable species.

The yearly temperature fluctuations within the Great Barrier Reef occur on the same scale as predicted changes in conditions due to climate change. Between winter and summer, the ocean temperature fluctuates between 14.4 and 16.2 degrees Fahrenheit. The continual existence of corals within this region supports the claim that corals will be able to adapt to changing water conditions. However some special types of adaptation are what scientists consider to be their main saving mechanisms.

The presence of “warm genes” is one instance of an effective coral adaptation strategy. A study done on the same species of coral in Florida and Mexico found a genetic difference that allowed those in Mexico to survive unharmed in warmer waters. In short, the same species of coral was able to alter its genes to survive.

Another example involved the ability of some corals to survive in extremely acidic “submarine springs,” which are areas with naturally low pH levels that mirror those of projected climate change levels.

Though we may rest assured that corals will not entirely disappear, the natural selection process will cause future reefs to look very different from those we are used to today. For example, the projected increase in mound-shaped coral types, and decrease in branch-like types, will make a much smoother and less elaborate looking reef. This change may also decrease the types and amount of marine fauna present in the reefs because of a decrease in nooks and crannies in which small creatures can hide.

Though the world’s reefs may survive climate change, there are many other factors that threaten their survival. The most current and pressing issues to address include pollution and overfishing.

The Columbia Generating Station, a nuclear power plant, near Richland, Wash. might have its license renewed in May to produce energy until 2043.

The plant started up in 1983 and its license expired Jan. 19, 2010. The plant has currently passed its safety regulation checks and thus entered the final phase of its license renewal.

Washington meets 75 percent of its energy needs with hydroelectric power, the most in the nation, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. It also has a growing supply of energy generated by wind and the sun. Therefore, the state does not necessarily need nuclear power as it has an abundance of other forms of clean production that provide for it.

However, nuclear energy remains one of the best options for current energy dependent nations to move away from fossil fuels into more sustainable living.

Many people have negative feelings toward nuclear power, especially since the Fukushima disaster, because of widely held perception that many dangers remain. For the most part these views have been exaggerated.

The thought, though, that a nuclear meltdown could occur should not be viewed as ridiculous. I have long believed that anytime a company argues that nothing could possibly go wrong, something bad is likely to happen — man is not infallible. For example, look at the BP oil spill, politicians and the oil industry attempted to convince the public that offshore drilling could never lead to a disaster. They still are trying to convince us that it is completely safe.

However, nuclear energy is not that dangerous in comparison to fossil fuels. Coal produces more radioactive material than nuclear energy, said Donald E. Wall, director of WSU’s Nuclear Radiation Center during a lecture last year. While in comparison, coal kills the same amount of people as automobile accidents every year in the U.S. During nuclear reactions, zero contaminants escape into the air.

In reality, coal has far worse side effects for both the environment and the greater population’s health. Even cleaner fossil fuels like natural gas and oil will still produce some contaminants into the air.

Nuclear power also acts as a more efficient energy source than coal — a single grain has enough power to generate electricity for a thousand houses in a single day.

It would take a ton of coal to produce the same amount of energy.

No other energy source, wind, solar or hydroelectric has the efficiency of nuclear. Industrialized societies will never be able to completely get off of fossil fuels without some dependency on nuclear energy.

France bases 75 percent of its energy use on nuclear power and produces next to no nuclear waste thanks to its method of recycling almost all of its material.

Despite all the benefits of nuclear energy, it is important to know the Fukushima meltdown was not a freak occurrence. According to CNN, no modern nuclear reactor could have withstood the earthquake and tsunami that Fukushima underwent. I do not think this is a problem for the U.S. because plenty of places do not sit on multiple fault lines and are miles from the nearest ocean, including Kansas, Colorado and many central plains states.

Washington might not be the best place for a nuclear reactor due to our potential for natural disasters and our capability to sustain ourselves on other forms of energy. This does not mean that nuclear energy should be seen as a non-reliable form of sustainable energy. In fact, reactors produce a cleaner, more efficient and safer form of energy than fossil fuels. In order for the U.S to move away from oil we will need to utilize more nuclear power plants.

]]>http://uwire.com/2012/04/20/column-nuclear-energy-deserves-more-credit/feed/0Column: Earth Day suckshttp://uwire.com/2012/04/20/column-earth-day-sucks/
http://uwire.com/2012/04/20/column-earth-day-sucks/#commentsFri, 20 Apr 2012 13:18:32 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=133367I am a committed environmental activist, and I think Earth Day is the bane of the environmental movement. Why? Because every day that we drink, eat, or breathe is “earth day.” Yet Americans officially devote only twenty-four hours to being green deliberately. Too many people believe that celebrating Earth Day can exempt them from further action. This is absurd, and it’s damaging the environmental cause. The environmentalist movement needs new strategies that drive environmental awareness into everyday life if we ever hope to address the challenges of climate change.

Earth Day has produced some benefits. The first Earth Day in 1970 rallied 20 million people in the United States alone. Today one billion people in 180 countries around the world participate in Earth Day. This is a testament to the solidarity that so many environmentalists yearn for. Clearly, people do desire to participate in meaningful collective action on behalf of the planet.

But the enthusiasm aroused on Earth Day is not sustained and does not create meaningful change. I turn to Aristotle’s description of the two types of virtue: virtue of thought and virtue of character. Virtue of thought “arises and grows from teaching; that is why it needs experience and time.” But virtue of character is achieved only through action. Knowledge plus action creates a habit, and a habit is durable.

The actions people take on Earth Day do not form habits. People are green for one day—maybe even for one week. Unfortunately, the pressure to recycle, bike, or change a light-bulb on Earth Day does not carry over to the other 364 days of the year. You won’t get coupons, free gifts, or the feeling of solidarity when you use your reusable bag on November 15. No one will remind you to recycle on August 22. Behavior tends to degrade as the memory of Earth Day fades.

Two recent reports highlight the movement’s need for new strategies and show that green actions have not turned into everyday habits for most Americans. A recent Gallup poll reveals sobering data comparing Americans’ perceptions of climate change in 1997 and 2010. The number of people who think that they will never experience the effects of climate change in their lifetimes increased by 10 percent. In 2003, 61 percent of American thought that climate change was caused by human activities. This number dived to 50 percent in 2010. Another report by George Mason U., “Climate Change in the American Mind,” reinforces this picture. In 2008, 44 percent of respondents said they would switch to energy efficient light bulbs, but by 2011 that figure had dropped to 34 percent. In 2008, 42 percent said that Americans’ energy-saving actions would reduce global warming. Only 26 percent believed this in 2011.

The environmental movement is drifting further from its goals as fewer people are committed to energy-saving actions or believe they can have an impact. The apparent “power” of Earth Day has not converted thought to habit. Instead, Earth Day has a soporific effect of creating a false sense of accomplishment. At the same time, millions of dollars and massive human energy are spent on mounting, advertising, and coordinating single events on Earth Day alone. If these financial and human resources were distributed throughout the year, there would be a much more tangible effect.

Instead of focusing on one day, environmentalists need to take a more holistic approach that will create lasting habits: Launching campaigns that promote environmental education every day of the year, starting programs that make it easy to recycle in the winter, and mobilizing bottom-up support for climate legislation. The mission should be to provide permanent opportunities for people to be green. Frequent events and awareness-raising gatherings should pervade communities as well. Constant reminders to be and think green—light-bulb swaps, incentives, and green logos on websites—should permeate society. Then these activities will become ingrained in our lives, converting ideas to habits. On Earth Day, it’s easy to be green. This should be true on all days of the year.

The one billion people in 180 countries participating in Earth Day annually can lead the healing of our planet when they begin to commit 365 days of the year. This will not happen instantaneously. But it is an important goal. We cannot let Earth Day create a false sense of security. We shouldn’t be fooled by energy savings that accrue over twenty-four hours or by enthusiasm that does not produce sustainable action. Environmentalists need new strategies that will turn healing into habit, and create a movement, not a moment.

The PGC, in collaboration with the British Antarctic Survey, the Australian Antarctic Division and Scripps Institution of Oceanography collected the data by monitoring images taken by a satellite, which passed over Antarctica about five times per day. A computer algorithm translated the images into a total population count.

“I’m floored; we’re talking about counting an entire species from orbit,” said Paul Morin, PGC’s director.

Founded in 2007, the PGC provides mapping services for the United States Antarctic Program. In 2009, Peter Fretwell, a geographer with the British Antarctic Survey, approached one of the center’s graduate students, Michelle LaRue, to help with the survey because of her previous work using QuickBird to map dry valleys in Antarctica.

Fretwell’s work on penguin research began in 2008, when his team realized they could identify the locations of emperor penguin colonies by looking for excrement stains on the ice.

But the low-resolution imagery he was using only provided the locations of colonies, not of individual birds, LaRue said. Collaborating with the PGC allowed for a more thorough and complete count. Using the locations of colonies that Fretwell had found, the team was able to zoom in on those locations and see individual birds.

LaRue, who has visited Antarctica four times to conduct field research, described the continent as surreal.

“There’s no sense of scale. I was in the dry valleys, and I was looking up to the top of this nice little hill –– what I thought was a hill –– and it was actually, I believe, deeper than the Grand Canyon,” she said.

But because the survey utilized QuickBird, very little field work was needed for the population count. Traveling to Antarctica by air or by ship is costly, and certain areas are unreachable, LaRue said.

“Having a satellite image really fixes that problem,” she said.

Images used for the population count were taken during the birds’ mating season in October and November of 2009, LaRue said. During mating season, the birds are in a large group that remains more or less in the same place, making them easy to count, she said.

The discovery of twice as many penguins as expected was astounding for the team.

Previous population counts were based on annual visits to a handful of penguin colonies, LaRue said. Field researchers would take the number of penguins they counted and extrapolate to create an estimate of the population’s total size. Before the completion of the survey, researchers believed the emperor penguin population totaled 300,000 at most.

Thanks to the accurate count of the survey, researchers can now monitor population trends over time. There are also plans to observe changes in sea ice due to climate change. Penguins lay their eggs on the ice, and the team is curious to see if the population will be affected by these changes, LaRue said.

The PGC will continue to use QuickBird for other mapping purposes. Cole Kelleher, one of the students working on Antarctic mapping, said a major part of the work is assisting field researchers.

“They can be more efficient and more prepared for what’s out there,” he said.

The PGC has also received funding to expand its research to the Arctic. This will be different, Morin said, because unlike Antarctica, the Arctic is inhabited by about 4 million people, including 2 million in urban areas.

“We forget about this, but the U.S. is an Arctic nation. We have Alaska. … It’s easy to forget that here as we’re sitting outside in Minnesota drinking iced tea,” Morin said.

]]>http://uwire.com/2012/04/16/emperor-penguin-population-much-larger-than-expected/feed/0Column: What’s the ‘fracking’ problem?http://uwire.com/2012/04/04/column-whats-the-fracking-problem/
http://uwire.com/2012/04/04/column-whats-the-fracking-problem/#commentsWed, 04 Apr 2012 19:12:41 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=130934You may have already spent your lunch money on a donation toward the KONY 2012 effort, but there’s a new fundraising campaign that may actually have more impact than the leaky Invisible Children movement.

Ann and Phelim Media LLC is currently raising funds to expose the truth about “fracking” through their documentary entitled FrackNation.

While the word “fracking” may pierce the heart of any crazed environmentalist, many Americans are unfamiliar with the details of this process. Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a process that has been used by the oil and gas industry for decades. Engineers pump water and chemicals into shale rock to create cracks, and then harvest oil and natural gas that would otherwise remain trapped underground.

The entire process is carefully overseen and monitored with state-of-the-art technology, and it has opened up thousands of jobs. We have seen the success of fracking in North Dakota and other states where the unemployment rate has shrunken to 3 percent. Wages are so high in North Dakota that McDonald’s is actually offering $15 an hour to keep up.

Not only does fracking provide jobs, it reduces energy costs so people can afford their utilities. For those living off small wages or miniature pensions, this could mean the difference of living in a small house or in a cramped trailer.

Critics complain about the chemicals used in the fracking process, including hydrochloric acid, diesel fuel and benzene; yet there is no proof behind accusations of water resource contamination.

And now critics have flocked behind the latest environmentalist propaganda to hit HBO.

Josh Fox’s “Gasland” (2010), which relies heavily on anecdotal evidence, argues that fracking is poisoning our water supplies and making our water flammable. The trailer for this film sensationally features a man igniting the water flowing from his faucet.

Yet as filmmakers Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer point out in their trailer for FrackNation, water has been flammable in places for centuries. This is simply the result of natural gas bubbling up through water sources, thus making it ignitable. It has occurred in states such as West Virginia, Kentucky and New York. There is actually a place in New York called Burning Springs known for its flammable water — hence the name “Burning Springs.” Discovered in 1669, the springs were burning away well before fracking became popular.

Whether or not the burning bush that spoke to Moses was also a result of ancient fracking still remains questionable (sources say that Al Gore is flying his corporate jet into Egypt to conduct further research.)

As for the claim of water contamination, McElhinney and McAleer found this was a downright lie.

None of their interviewees reported any contaminants in their water supply. McAleer actually questioned Fox on camera about his claims regarding contamination in “Gasland,” and the footage was immediately forced off YouTube and Vimeo by Fox’s lawyers.

Can you say “suspicious?” What are they trying to hide?

Environmentalists also blame fracking for seismic disturbances. This may be true, but so does the process of obtaining geothermic power — a so-called “sustainable” source of energy.

Liberals constantly point to loopholes in federal laws that would otherwise restrict fracking, but federal bureaucrats would have already found a way to stop it if it posed any real health issues. After all, they’ve had decades to look into it.

The ugly truth: they have no proof. Rather, they have proven that it’s safe.

Lies have unfortunately infiltrated the environmentalist narrative yet again and have attracted the ears of celebrities such as Mark Ruffalo. Why? Because scaring people about flammable gas is fun and profitable to them.

Stories about fracking are wrong and threatening their future. Cheap energy and an abundance of jobs are at stake here. Will we miss out on this opportunity because of environmentalist propaganda and its celebrity following?

For $1, you can become an executive producer of FrackNation, which is expected to be released in June. I encourage you to resist the current narrative, and visit FrackNation.com today.

]]>http://uwire.com/2012/04/04/column-whats-the-fracking-problem/feed/0Algae shows promise in biofuel testshttp://uwire.com/2012/03/30/algae-shows-promise-in-biofuel-tests/
http://uwire.com/2012/03/30/algae-shows-promise-in-biofuel-tests/#commentsFri, 30 Mar 2012 13:53:16 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=130224Anyone with a fish tank has probably put plenty of energy into cleaning algae out of water. Within the next decade, though, the energy in algae may be a viable source for fuel, thanks to researchers at Texas A&M U. who are developing an algae biofuel.

Algae naturally converts sunlight into an energy source during photosynthesis and can be used as a type of biofuel in two different ways. The most common way involves taking lipids, or fats, out of the algae to use as biodiesel. An alternative method creates a hydrocarbon fuel similar to gasoline or diesel. Unlike biodiesels, hydrocarbon fuel does not have oxygen and is more energy dense, which makes it a more versatile fuel source and usable in aircraft.

“The overall efficiency, rapid growth rate and yield are the major advantages of using algae,” said Joshua Yuan, assistant professor in the department of plant pathology and microbiology.

The research group aims to create methods that would generate higher yields from algae; these yields could make it possible for algae biofuel to be produced on a larger scale, then sold as an alternative to gasoline. For this to happen, the process will have to become more cost-efficient.

“For the algae to be useful as a biofuel, there are some technical barriers. For example, extracting lipids is very difficult because it is very costly,” said Shangxian Xie, plant pathology graduate student. “Right now we are developing technology to harvest the algae more cheaply by cultivating it into a pellet so you only need a filter to harvest it.”

Xie said this new method allows for a three-to-four-fold increase in yield. Innovations like this make production less expensive and more applicable to the energy market.

Another method the research group is examining involves photorespiration, an alternative to photosynthesis, where sugar is combined with oxygen. Photorespiration is not as efficient as photosynthesis and typically causes a quarter of the carbon to be lost. Yuan’s research explores ways to use this lost carbon as an energy source.

“The pathway takes the excess carbon normally lost and shunts it towards hydrocarbon synthesis. So now you have a system that just needs light, water, carbon dioxide and some minimal nutrients to produce hydrocarbons,” said Ryan Syrenne, molecular and environmental plant sciences graduate student.

Other methods currently studied by the researchers to improve algae’s use as a biofuel source involve using genes from various algae species to create a type of algae that excels in the critical areas of efficiency, growth and yield.

The possibilities of renewable energy sources like algae are also being explored by the government. In February, President Barack Obama announced his support for algae research and offered up to $14 million in grant money to assist researchers. Yuan said his research proves biofuels have the potential to become a part of the solution to the problem of depending on a non-renewable fuel source.

Currently, production of algae biofuel costs more than $20 per gallon, but that cost is slowly coming down as techniques like those explored by Yuan’s lab make it less expensive to produce large quantities.

Yuan said by the time algae biofuel becomes marketable, at around $5 per gallon in the next decade or two, it will be a much cheaper and viable option compared to gasoline that will possibly sport a double-digit price tag by then. In the meantime, Yuan and his team plan to strive for even better developments.

“My next dream is artificial photosynthesis,” Yuan said. “We are only limited by our resources.”

]]>http://uwire.com/2012/03/30/algae-shows-promise-in-biofuel-tests/feed/0U.S. can store 100 years’ worth of carbon dioxide underground, study findshttp://uwire.com/2012/03/27/u-s-can-store-100-years-worth-of-carbon-dioxide-underground-study-finds/
http://uwire.com/2012/03/27/u-s-can-store-100-years-worth-of-carbon-dioxide-underground-study-finds/#commentsTue, 27 Mar 2012 14:08:37 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=129666The U.S. may have the capacity to store about a century’s worth of America’s carbon dioxide emissions underground in deep saline aquifers, according to a study published last week by Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientists.

The scientists found that using carbon capture and storage, or CCS, is “geologically viable,” according to the study. CCS is a process that involves capturing carbon dioxide emissions at such sources as power plants and compressing and injecting them into reservoirs for long-term storage.

The nation produces about six gigatons of carbon dioxide per year, the equivalent of about twenty million barrels of oil per day, said Ruben Juanes, the researcher who led the study and a professor of energy studies in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Deep saline aquifers could hold up to 20,000 billion metric tons, according to the study, and CCS could hold deposits of carbon dioxide for up to 20,000 years, he said.

The nation’s carbon dioxide emission rates have hovered at about 5.5 billion metric tons per year since the late 1990s, according to United Nations data.

“Human emissions have been increasing in a sustained fashion ever since the advent of the industrial revolution,” Juanes said.

The study sought to determine the best methods for injecting liquefied carbon dioxide to increase the maximum capacity of the aquifers, analyzing such factors as injection rates and pressures. It determined the optimal conditions for employing CCS.

The study also faced constraints such as “uncertainty in geologic storage capacities and sustainable injection rates.”

It attributed the first issue to different procedures of calculating large-scale capacity. Injection rates of carbon dioxide also caused problems due to an accumulation of pressure.

In order to estimate the storage capacity for the U.S., researchers transposed data related to the behavior of fluid carbon dioxide and constraints on injection rates onto a model that applied the nation’s known deep saline aquifers, according to the study.

The aquifers are distributed throughout the country, but clusters of them center in such areas as the Southeast, including Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina, and the area bordering Lake Michigan – Illinois, Indiana and Michigan.

Storage technology similar to CSS has already been implemented in a number of places, Juanes said, in Norway and Algeria.

]]>http://uwire.com/2012/03/27/u-s-can-store-100-years-worth-of-carbon-dioxide-underground-study-finds/feed/0Gas prices continue to rise, US to develop more clean energyhttp://uwire.com/2012/03/27/gas-prices-continue-to-rise-us-to-develop-more-clean-energy/
http://uwire.com/2012/03/27/gas-prices-continue-to-rise-us-to-develop-more-clean-energy/#commentsTue, 27 Mar 2012 13:36:16 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=129664The U.S. retail gas prices are climbing across the country — now at $3.918 a gallon on average, a $0.051 increase from a week ago, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

The Obama Administration is tackling the issue of the rising gas prices and investing in a clean energy economy, and at the same time Barack Obama’s energy policy is under fire by Republican presidential candidates.

Mitt Romney recently said that Obama “has done everything in his power to make it harder for us to get oil and natural gas in this country, driving up the price of those commodities in the case of gasoline.”

Gas prices continue to rise and are unpredictable with growing global oil consumption and economic instability.

According to EIA, the biggest factor of gas prices is the cost of crude oil. Distribution and marketing, taxes and refining contribute to the rest of the cost.

Andre Boehman, Penn State U. Professor of Fuel Science and Materials Science and Engineering, said many factors contributed to the oil prices, such as the supply and demand of the market, situation of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, speculation of financial crisis and the tension between Iran and the West.

“There is a lot of issues going on internationally, and a great uncertainty of oil prices,” Boehman said. “The oil market is an artificial market affected by geopolitics.”

Boehman said the gas price increase will encourage people to make wiser choices, buy more energy-efficient vehicles and be more careful about petroleum consumption as “we are currently taking it for granted.”

According to the Obama Energy Agenda report, after the president took office, domestic crude oil production is rising, and U.S. dependence on foreign oil is down to less than 50 percent of domestic consumption in 2011.

The United States has nearly doubled renewable energy generation from wind, solar and geothermal sources since 2008, according to the report.

“For individuals, it will still take a while for us to use natural gas cars because of the difficulty of refueling,” Boehman said. “A home-refueling system cost around $5,000.”

The Energy Institute — the Diesel Combustion and Emissions Laboratory within the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, is working on developing renewable fuel vehicles and advanced clean energy.

In February 2011, Obama delivered a speech at Rec Hall touting the importance of Penn State’s research efforts in moving the nation toward a clean energy future with its technology and building initiatives.

Boehman said the research is ongoing, for example, to improve energy-efficient buildings like the HUB-Robeson Center.

]]>http://uwire.com/2012/03/27/gas-prices-continue-to-rise-us-to-develop-more-clean-energy/feed/0Study: Students do not recycle as much as beforehttp://uwire.com/2012/03/20/study-students-do-not-recycle-as-much-as-before/
http://uwire.com/2012/03/20/study-students-do-not-recycle-as-much-as-before/#commentsTue, 20 Mar 2012 22:42:22 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=128860A recent study shows the current generation’s college students are less interested in recycling and the environment than past students.

According to a study published March 5 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, fewer students are taking action to help the environment. Millennials, the generation born after 1982, showed less interest in their communities, social issues and protecting the environment than Generation X.

Researchers pulled information from two data collections to evaluate high school seniors and college freshmen.

Fifteen percent of Millennials said they made no personal effort to help the environment. Five percent of baby boomers, born between 1946 and 1961, said the same.

Ashley Pennington, outreach coordinator for the U. Florida Office of Sustainability, said the study does not correlate with what she sees at UF.

According to the Office of Sustainability’s website, UF recycles about 6,000 tons of material a year, and an office report stated that about 3,000 students are involved with sustainability.

]]>http://uwire.com/2012/03/20/study-students-do-not-recycle-as-much-as-before/feed/0Column: The politics of foodhttp://uwire.com/2012/03/20/column-the-politics-of-food/
http://uwire.com/2012/03/20/column-the-politics-of-food/#commentsTue, 20 Mar 2012 14:55:36 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=128812In his 2008 book In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, Michael Pollan advised people to restore simplicity to food practices. Pollan’s message, clearly encapsulated as, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants,” resonated strongly with the myriad groups and differentiated movements that have morphed into “the food movement.” In stressing simplicity, these recent efforts at food reform have differed from their predecessors by moving past the politics of food production, regulation, and inspection. They focus instead on the diverse ethical, cultural, environmental, and health implications of food. Yet, despite that broad focus, the recent food movement is inherently political. By challenging us to slow down and carefully consider the consequences of food consumption and creation, the movement and its crisscrossing components challenge us to rethink the role of government in the new “politics” of food.

Though the movement often strives for simplicity in food practices, its debates hardly have narrow scope. In one subset of food politics, health and lifestyle concerns drive efforts to change America’s “food culture” and render its defining practices more sustainable. This has given rise to campaigns promoting gardening, composting, healthy cooking, and food literacy. Likewise, as Americans continue to struggle against diet-related illnesses, government health experts are tasked with balancing the country’s needs for greater access to quality food (online article) and limiting unhealthy food in programs such as school lunches. This debate is central to efforts to reform the food stamp program, where ensuring positive health outcomes is more important than ever, given that one out of every seven Americans currently uses the program. In these instances, the food movement has stressed the importance of fostering positive relationships with healthy food.

Elsewhere, there is concern about how governments impact agricultural practices. From subsidies in the U.S. Farm Bill to preferential trade policies for European agricultural producers in the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy, debate as to which crops should be supported and what effects those preferential policies have on developing foreign markets. Genetically modified crops, and their potentially controversial environmental effects, are also included in this discussion. Furthermore, political moves to support agriculture at the expense of natural resources have recently come under fire, as with the Florida Everglades.

Ultimately, moves towards sustainable, grass-grazed, cage-free, and organic foods, as well as improved food access and culture, form the backbone of the modern food movement. Still, as China’s example shows, oversight is still necessary, particularly when concerning the deceptive food-marketing tactics of corporations in the developing world. If there is one overarching goal that everyone in the food movement agrees on, it is avoiding exporting past mistakes of the United States’ unsustainable and unhealthy food practices abroad.

]]>http://uwire.com/2012/03/20/column-the-politics-of-food/feed/0Column: The descent of Mannhttp://uwire.com/2012/03/14/column-the-descent-of-mann/
http://uwire.com/2012/03/14/column-the-descent-of-mann/#commentsWed, 14 Mar 2012 13:36:15 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=128169The Virginia Supreme Court ruled March 2nd against Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli and his renewed attempts to obtain access to the emails and documents used in the research of a former U. Virginia professor. Michael Mann — who was on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 and is a significant contributor to the theory of anthropomorphic, or man-made, global warming — received tax-payer funded grants from the years 1999 to 2005. Cuccinelli’s move to check Mann’s research engendered a good deal of backlash, both from the University and members of the scientific community. Many see Cuccinelli’s efforts as a kind of witch hunt, malicious and counterproductive. Cuccinelli, for his part, stated: “We were simply trying to review documents that are unquestionably state property to determine whether or not fraud had been committed.”

Many see the ruling as a victory for university research and the end of a protracted, uninformed attack on solid science. But some still doubt Mann and his research. Their reason? A few years ago, in late 2009, a well-publicized incident involving the hacking and subsequent leaking of climate scientists’ emails gave climate change skeptics room to maneuver.

Some of Mann’s emails were brought into question in the breach at the University of East Anglia. In one email, there is a mention of a “trick” that had been used by Mann to “hide the decline” in temperature over the years. Mann explained that the term “trick” in this case refers to a means of solving a problem. Some of the emails seemed to suggest that climate scientists were purposefully withholding information which did not support their theories about global warming. Those whose emails were hacked, and many who follow their work, were able to diffuse the situation and divert many of the accusations coming from climate change skeptics. The incident could not be entirely forgotten, though, and doubt still exists because of it.

In light of this, I find Mann’s response to Cuccinelli’s actions to be a bit confusing. If Mann is competent and confident in his research and findings, then why does he not welcome the closer look at his methods? If I were in Mann’s shoes, I would be more than happy to show those who questioned my work all that I had done to acquire my results. If Mann has nothing to hide, then Cuccinelli’s scrutiny would serve the purpose of helping to erase any doubt which remains from the East Anglia hacking from 2009. And while I would be one of the first to say I have a problem with Big Brother looking over the shoulder of anyone publishing his or her own research, Mann’s scientific investigation was funded by taxpayers. Furthermore, his legitimacy has, in the past, been called into question. That Cuccinelli was requesting to see what are, at least in part, state documents is not the outrage Mann supporters think it is.

Denying global warming is a costly venture for many scientists. Those who speak out often lose government funding for their research and are ridiculed by their peers for taking up the opposing argument. On the other side, there are those who believe that mankind is to blame for the rising temperatures, and who feel that something must be done, and soon, to save us from catastrophe. These individuals, in my experience, take it for granted that the problem and its consequences, as they see it, even exist. Their mindset is that the problem exists without a doubt and that detractors from this belief are wasting valuable time with superfluous argumentation.

I will not go as far as saying there has been no temperature change — it is hard to deny the data which suggests the increase in temperatures in recent years. But I am certainly unwilling to sign off on the anthropomorphic version of global warming without further discussion. Many scientists and climatologists dissent when it comes to the theory of man-made global warming. The strategy of believers, lately, has been to simply ignore those who challenge the idea of man-made global warming and point to the “consensus” reached by the entire scientific community saying it happened. Such a consensus is hard to come by in the scientific community and does not yet exist. As long as notable professionals around the world — such as Ivar Giaever, a Noble Prize winner and former member of the American Physical Society; Professor Richard Lindzen, an atmospheric physicist meteorology professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Professor Emeritus William Gray, who is well-known for his work in forecasting hurricanes — are challenging this idea, the debate should go on.

I say nothing critical of Mann’s research — he is a well-known and respected professional in his field. I merely point out that his approach to the debate, and the approach of those on his side, will not yield any progress. If the work he has done is accurate and honest, then there should be no danger in showing it. In fact, Mann should see Cuccinelli’s investigation as a chance to say: “Go ahead — check my resources. Everything I’ve done is verifiable and well-researched. These are the facts.” Mann should take pride in his work and use it, and the opportunity provided by Cuccinelli’s continued doubt, to legitimize his research and further prove his point. He has nothing to lose if he has nothing to hide.

On the one year anniversary of the Fukushima Daiichi meltdown in Japan, alternative energy advocates claimed little has changed in nuclear power plant regulation and that Wisconsin’s drinking water could be at risk for contamination in the event of a similar situation in the state.

Clean energy and anti-nuclear advocates gathered at Wisconsin’s Capitol Monday to review what they learned when a major tsunami damaged the Fukushima Daiichi reactors in Japan last year, causing multiple meltdowns.

Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, said while the Nuclear Regulatory Commission put together a list of 12 recommendations it plans to implement, it has not given any timetables to do so.

“So what did we learn from this? After 40 years of studying this topic, I have boiled it down to one rhetorical question: Does it make sense to make plutonium just to boil water?” Makhijani said. “Because all a nuclear reactor does is nothing but boil water. Lots of ways to boil water. [We've] got a free nuclear reactor in the sky, and we’re not using it.”

Makhijani said the country should increase focus on renewable energy sources and needs to have a discussion at the state level on alternative energy forms.

John Kinsman, president of Family Farm Defenders, said a new push to build nuclear power plants exists in Wisconsin.

“Worst yet, as spent fuel rods pile up at existing reactors on the shores of Lake Michigan and on islands on the Mississippi river, eyes are shifting to Wisconsin as a potential host for a national high level radioactive waste dump site,” Kinsman said. “One can only imagine the inherent dangers with transporting such waste by truck, ship and train across the continent to our Northwoods for burial forever.”

While other states are building nuclear power plants for the first time in years, Mitchell Singer, spokesperson for the Nuclear Energy Institute, said no plans exist to build more nuclear power plants in Wisconsin.

Drew Lehman, a Wisconsin Public Interest Research Group program associate, said drinking water for 202,000 Wisconsinites is within 50 miles of an active nuclear power plant.

Lehman said a leak could threaten the drinking water, and 75 percent of U.S. nuclear power plants have leaked tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen which could cause cancer and genetic defects.

“With nuclear power, there is too much at risk, and the dangers are too close to home,” Lehman said. “Wisconsinites shouldn’t have to worry about getting cancer from drinking a glass of water.”

However, Singer called the claims “ridiculous.” He said none of the leaks at the plants have exceeded safety regulations and they have not had any effect on public health.

According to U.S. Energy Information Administration statistics, two nuclear power plants operate in Wisconsin, one in Kewaunee and the other in Point Beach. Nuclear power represents about 20 percent of the state’s total energy generation.

Singer said in the 1980s, people searched for a permanent depository for nuclear waste. They looked at a number of possibilities and settled on Yucca Mountain in Nevada. However, because of political reasons, Singer said a Yucca Mountain depository is probably not likely to become a reality.

He said a federal commission has not offered any formal recommendations for the new site.

]]>http://uwire.com/2012/03/13/experts-urge-for-more-expansive-nuclear-safety-policies/feed/0Court says noted environmental professor does not have to turn over researchhttp://uwire.com/2012/03/12/court-says-noted-environmental-professor-does-not-have-to-turn-over-research/
http://uwire.com/2012/03/12/court-says-noted-environmental-professor-does-not-have-to-turn-over-research/#commentsMon, 12 Mar 2012 12:51:42 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=127897The Virginia Supreme Court ruled this month that Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli does not have the right to review former U. Virginia Environmental Sciences Prof. Michael Mann’s research produced during his time at the University.

The Supreme Court decided state agencies, such as the University, cannot be considered ‘persons’ under the Fraud Against Taxpayers Act, and therefore cannot be the subject of a Civil Investigative Demand such as the one Cuccinelli issued.

University President Teresa Sullivan issued a statement March 2 thanking the University’s faculty and the faculty at other universities for their support.

“This is an important decision that will be welcomed here and in [the] broader higher education community,” Sullivan said.

Cuccinelli first requested access to Mann’s research grant applications and emails April 2010, allegedly to determine whether Mann had committed fraud during his research. Mann, now a member of Pennsylvania State U.’s faculty, had been conducting research about global warming while at U.Va.

Mann was an assistant professor in the University’s environmental sciences department from 1999 to 2005.

“[The inquiries are] a coordinated assault against the scientific community by powerful vested interests who simply want to stick their heads in the sand and deny the problem of human-caused climate change, rather than engage in the good faith debate about what to do about it,” Mann said in an email.

Mann said the Inspector General of the National Science Foundation had reviewed his research in the context of Cuccinelli’s allegations and had found the allegations to be baseless.

Albemarle County Circuit Judge Paul Peatross denied Cuccinelli’s request to access Mann’s documents in August 2010. Cuccinelli then appealed his case to the state’s Supreme Court. He also filed another CID while the first case was being appealed, which the University filed a motion to deny, University Spokesperson Carol Wood said in an email.

The University spent a total of $570,697.97 to hire Hogan Lovells, a Washington, D.C. law firm, to fight the CIDs. Wood said all funds came from private funds.

Virginia Senate Democrats at Wednesday’s legislative session presented amendments to the proposed budget which would reimburse the University for the funds spent in the fight.

Jeff Ryer, spokesperson for the Senate Republican Caucus, said the amendments were so new he could not yet gauge Senate support.

“I don’t think anyone’s had an opportunity to analyze it; I understand [it was proposed] less than 48 hours ago,” Ryer said Friday.

Though senators did not complete deliberation of the budget by the Saturday deadline, Ryer said the Senate Finance Committee analyzed the reimbursement Friday.

]]>http://uwire.com/2012/03/12/court-says-noted-environmental-professor-does-not-have-to-turn-over-research/feed/0Pollution may trigger strokes, research findshttp://uwire.com/2012/03/09/pollution-may-trigger-strokes-research-finds/
http://uwire.com/2012/03/09/pollution-may-trigger-strokes-research-finds/#commentsFri, 09 Mar 2012 15:56:25 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=127683Even at levels that comply with federal regulations set by the Environmental Protection Agency, air pollution may increase the risk of stroke, according to research led by Gregory Wellenius, Brown U. assistant professor of epidemiology. Wellenius’ study was published last month in Archives of Internal Medicine.

Wellenius and his team retrieved the medical records of 1,705 patients at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston hospitalized with ischemic stroke ­— a condition often caused by the blockage of an artery to the brain ­— and compared the timing of the onset of their symptoms with air pollution values.

Previous studies had used the date of hospital admission rather than timing the onset of symptoms, a methodology more ‘prone to error’ as half of patients had their strokes on a different calendar day than the date of their hospitalization, Wellenius said.

Boston was ‘always in compliance with federal standards’ for air pollution during the study, Wellenius said, and yet the team found a 34 percent higher risk of stroke on days with ‘moderate’ levels of pollution, as compared to ‘good’ days.

Pollution, as defined by the EPA, includes measurements of ozone, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide, as well as different size fractions of particles and lead, though this last component is not as prevalent since it ceased to be present in gasoline.

‘At levels that the EPA considers to be generally safe, we’re seeing a large increase in rate of stroke, which suggests that the EPA may not be adequately protecting the public,’ Wellenius said. ‘This really is a public health problem.’ Wellenius offered the tightening of regulations as a potential solution.

‘I certainly can imagine where air quality will affect all sorts of things health-wise,’ said Elaine Jones, who specializes in stroke at Roger Williams Medical Center. ‘Why there should be a direct effect on strokes is a little surprising to me.’

Even though the study suggests a correlation between air quality and stroke risk, there may not be a direct cause-and-effect relationship between the two, Jones said.

‘In science, you can have things that appear to be related but have nothing to do with each other,’ she continued. ‘On days of poor air quality, perhaps people will eat differently, you know?’

Jones added she would not change her patients’ care or public policy based on Wellenius’s study.

Wellenius’ next goal is to replicate his findings in different cities across the country, as they may have different health risks. ‘Pollution mixtures change in different cities,’ he said. ‘So the pollution in (Los Angeles) is very different from the pollution in Boston.’

]]>http://uwire.com/2012/03/09/pollution-may-trigger-strokes-research-finds/feed/0Tropical forests less able to absorb nitrogenhttp://uwire.com/2012/03/08/tropical-forests-less-able-to-absorb-nitrogen/
http://uwire.com/2012/03/08/tropical-forests-less-able-to-absorb-nitrogen/#commentsThu, 08 Mar 2012 18:53:26 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=127562The Earth’s tropical forests play a key role in absorbing man-made carbon dioxide, and scientists have traditionally believed that tropical forests could absorb nitrogen-based pollutants as well. However, research published by a team including Princeton U. ecology and evolutionary biology professor Lars Hedin and Princeton geosciences professor Daniel Sigman suggests that tropical forests may be less able to absorb polluting nitrogen than previously thought.

The results have implications for nature’s response to climate change, Sigman said. He explained that nitrogen and phosphorous are usually the nutrients that limit plant growth. Because ecosystems’ ability to absorb man-made carbon dioxide is limited by the availability of other nutrients, such as nitrogen and phosphorus, ecosystems’ response to climate change will depend on the levels of these nutrients.

Because rocks release phosphorus when they weather, scientists had previously expected the forests in the mountainous regions that the researchers studied to be relatively high in phosphorus and deficient in nitrogen. However, Sigman and Hedin found otherwise.

“The expectation that’s been in the field for decades is that a system like this would be nitrogen-poor,” Sigman said. “But these systems weren’t nitrogen-poor. Their streams have very high nitrate concentration.”

The researchers first investigated whether the extra nitrogen was a result of human activity. The scientists examined over a decade’s worth of water samples from Costa Rican forest streams and measured the levels of different forms of nitrogen in the streams. They found that most of the nitrogen appeared in the form of nitrate, an ion containing nitrogen and oxygen.

Sigman explained that there was no change in the nitrate concentrations in the stream samples over time. He added that this suggested levels of nitrogen in the forest were similar from year to year.

The scientists then investigated the levels of specific isotopes of nitrogen and oxygen in the streams. While the ratios of nitrogen isotopes in the samples confirmed that they were stable over time, the ratios of oxygen isotopes in the samples allowed the scientists to conclude that the nitrate was not produced by human activity.

“The oxygen isotopic composition of nitrate … is strongly affected by how much of that nitrate derives from the atmosphere … versus nitrogen that’s been turned over in the soil,” Sigman said. “All the nitrate had been turned over in the soils.”

Sigman said that because the forests already draw more nitrogen than they need from the atmosphere, they are unlikely to absorb extra nitrogen from pollution as well. If more nitrogen were added to the ecosystem, “all the systems downstream might be altered,” Sigman said.

Hedin also noted in a press release that their results call into question the future of tropical regions where nitrogen pollution is increasing.

Noting that the “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico near the mouth of the Mississippi River — where biodiversity is extremely low — is caused by excess nutrients from fertilizers, Sigman said the group’s research indicated that the risk of these areas in tropical regions may be greater than previously thought.

“On the most dramatic scale, this [dead zone] is the type of stuff you worry about,” Sigman said. “Across tropical regions, we may need to expect them to be less absorbent for pollution nitrogen than we thought of them as before.”

The paper was published in the February issue of Nature Geosciences.

]]>http://uwire.com/2012/03/08/tropical-forests-less-able-to-absorb-nitrogen/feed/0San Francisco ban on plastic grocery store bags to take effect in Octoberhttp://uwire.com/2012/03/07/san-francisco-ban-on-plastic-grocery-store-bags-to-take-effect-in-october/
http://uwire.com/2012/03/07/san-francisco-ban-on-plastic-grocery-store-bags-to-take-effect-in-october/#commentsThu, 08 Mar 2012 03:36:48 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=127449Retail customers in San Francisco will soon have another change to add to their purchase if they want a bag to carry home their goods.

In an effort to be more environmentally friendly, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors will implement an ordinance that will eradicate the use of plastic checkout bags, charge customers 10 cents to provide paper bags and impose penalties on retailers who continue to use plastic bags starting October 2012.

Plastic checkout bags were previously banned in large chain supermarkets and pharmacies five years ago due to the large quantities of plastic bags those stores distributed to customers. The previous ban is believed to have drastically diminished the number of plastic bags in landfills and in the bay, and the updated ban will abolish the use of plastic bags in all retail stores.

San Francisco was the first city in the country to ban plastic checkout bags. Since then, several cities nationwide have followed suit and banned plastic bags completely. San Jose banned them earlier this year, while Alameda and Humboldt counties are currently working on passing their own legislation. As the city that started the movement, San Francisco hopes to catch up with this new legislation.

City officials want this new legislation to promote recycling paper and compostable bags and encourage consumers to use reusable bags. They want this ordinance to eventually eliminate paper bags altogether as part of the zero waste goal, which aims to eliminate all waste in San Francisco by 2020 though recycling, composting and passing legislation to diminish waste

Supervisor Christina Olague said this legislation would dramatically reduce the impact of hundreds of millions of bags that are affecting the city.

“These bags end up as litter in our streets, as trash in our bay that harms marine life and damages aquatic ecosystems,” Olague said.

David Rantisi, who works at Tropicana Liquor Market, said there would still be waste in products customers use and don’t recycle or end up throwing on the street.

“There is waste in every product,” Rantisi said.

San Francisco resident Diana Canas admits she owns reusable bags, but doesn’t think to use them regularly enough. She believes this new legislation would force others like her to use them.

“There are plastic bags all over the street,” Canas said. “They are not reusable, at least not anymore.”

The San Francisco Department of the Environment will continue reach out to merchants during the next seven months to facilitate the transition. They will provide multi-language information about the legislation to retailers, employees, and consumers. They plan to provide merchants with lists of vendors that distribute recyclable, compostable or reusable bags.

Also as part of the outreach campaign there will be a reusable bag giveaway program to help promote the use of reusable bags to those families who may be affected by the additional cost from this legislation.

“The Department of the Environment has set aside $20,000 to invest in helping those in need as well as the community at large,” said Melanie Nutter, director of the department.

Some residents agree that the ban will help with waste but they are hesitant about the additional fee.

“We already have a hard economy,” said Heydy Mejia, a resident of San Francisco who thinks the new charge will further hurt consumers who are struggling financially.

Mejia said she owns and uses reusable bags when she shops at larger grocery stores. She frequently goes to smaller markets on a whim and does not bring her reusable bags with her. With the new ordinance she would have to carry her reusable bag with her at all times.

“I’d rather bring (my own bags) than get charged for a bag I don’t need,” Mejia said.

Olague said implementing a charge is the only effective way to change consumer’s behaviors about using reusable bags. She said the 10-cent charge would reduce bag use and will reduce cost for retailers if they have to provide fewer bags to consumers.

The new ban will have some exceptions. Plastic bags used to hold produce, meats and smaller items such as candy, and bags used to take left over food home from restaurants will not be banned for sanitary reasons as well as convenience. An exception for those customers purchasing large items will be made because there are no paper bags large enough to carry certain items. Bags used for garments at dry cleaners will not be banned.

There will be a fine for those retailers who continue to use plastic bags once the ban is implemented. The first offense will cost retailers $100, second offense $200 and $500 for any additional violations.

The Department of the Environment is encouraging merchants to use up their stock of plastic bags before they are banned. They will make exceptions with merchants who still have large quantities of plastic bags when the ban goes into effect so those merchants do not lose money.

With the passage of a new city ordinance that will ban the use of disposable bags in the city of Austin next year, somegrocers may have to alter parts of their stores in order to comply with the ban.

The ordinance was passed last week after several years of discussion over prohibiting paper and plastic bags and will go into effect in March 2013.

CVS manager Phil Wallace said the ban may present challenges for his store because of the integration of plastic bags in the checkout system.

“It looks like it could be an issue,” Wallace said. “Our registers are set up with specific-sized plastic bag rack holders, so I’m not quite sure yet how all this is going to shape out.”

While revising the physical layouts may be an inconvenience, Wallace said he believes the plastic bag ban is a positive step for customers to develop environmentally conscious habits.

“I think it’s a good thing, and I think in Austin we’ll see a favorable response to it in general,” he said. “But there’s still a lot of unknowns at this stage.”

While the concept of reusable bags is relatively new to stores like CVS, Wheatsville Food Co-op has promoted the idea for a while now, said brand manager Raquel Dadomo.

“We have socially aware, environmentally conscious customers who are already in this mindset to begin with, so it’s not too huge of a leap,” Dadomo said. “I think it’s going to be a big deal for other retailers, but not so much for us.”

Wheatsville also has a system that rewards customers for bringing their own reusable bags, Dadomo said. Each customer who brings a reusable bag receives a nickel which can go toward their purchase or toward a nonprofit organization the store is sponsoring that particular month, she said.

This reward system encourages shoppers to use recyclable bags, she said, and the donation program raised around $1,000 last year. Wheatsville’s policy helps customers give back to the community and also reflects the store’s environmentally conscious ideals, she said.

“It’s more about a sustainability measure for us,” she said. “We try to make sure that we’re really accessible. For us, it’s an overall measure to take care of the planet.”

Dadomo said Wheatsville customers are also in support of the bag ban. The store has conducted surveys through its Facebook and Twitter pages to gauge how the community is feeling about the bag ban, and the store has received much positive feedback about it, she said.

U. Texas freshman Jennie Lee Gruber, a frequent Wheatsville shopper, said she sees reusable bags as a good habit and not as an inconvenience.

“I’m a big recycling person, so it’s part of my routine to always take a bag,” she said. “I think that once you get in the habit, it’s just like taking your wallet.”

Gruber also said recyclable bags are an easy-to-use container for college students who don’t have as many groceries or a whole family to support.

“I really think it’s more convenient because it makes you shop for what can fit in our bag, and for a college kid, you only need one,” she said. “I think it would be harder on moms shopping for their whole family.”

Science and politics make poor bedfellows, particularly when the former is debated in the arena of the latter. The two major areas where the pairing seems particularly gruesome are evolution and climate science. While both are important ideas for our society to comprehend, the misunderstanding of climate change has much greater and more immediate consequences.

Climatologist Michael E. Mann of Pennsylvania State U. has been dragged into the political world, despite never wanting to leave the scientific one, all for studying the evidence and reaching the conclusion that the planet has been warming and humans are the main culprit. He details his experiences in his new book “The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars,” which tells the development of our understanding of climate change from Mann’s point of view, starting out as a grad student and eventually becoming a professor.

Reading the book, one gets the idea that those who perpetuate global warming denial not only hold their beliefs for ideological reasons rather than rational ones, but that there’s no level too low for them to stoop to in order to get their position across. The tactics, rather than being about scientific arguments, have led to personal attacks and death threats
against Mann.

More importantly, the prominent data seeming to refute a global warming hypothesis is based on faulty science and poor applications of statistical methods, in addition to some outright lies. One of the favorite arguments, for instance, is that the “Medieval Warm Period” actually saw higher temperatures than the 20th century. However, what Mann explains is that this is only true up to the 1950s — temperatures from the final decade of the century exceeded those during the “Warm Period.”

Ignorance is forgivable, however. And while the science in “The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars” is interesting and well-written, the most fascinating element is seeing just how dirty his opponents are willing to fight. This is most apparent in the recent “Climategate” scandal that Mann found himself in the middle of, which he describes throughout the book with a surprisingly non-confrontational tone. The scandal arose after a still unknown person hacked several private email accounts and leaked pieces of those emails, which related to Mann’s work. Taken out of context, the select emails seemed to suggest that climate scientists falsified evidence in order to cover up whatever data conflicted with the global warming hypothesis.

Rather than getting defensive, Mann directly and simply addresses the issues head on, admitting that though the tone in the private emails may have been a bit inappropriate at times, there was still nothing in them to be ashamed of as long as they were read in the larger context. One example involves using the word “trick,” which out of context seems to suggest deception, but actually refers to a mathematical shortcut to accomplish the same job with less effort. Just like in science, one needs to look at the big picture, rather than just cherry-picked pieces of data that support certain beliefs.

All things considered, Mann keeps things light and informative, explaining the science in clear and concise terms, responding to personal attacks by rebutting them without getting particularly defensive. His patience and ability to avoid frustration is impressive considering he’s essentially dealing with a topic that may or may not amount to the end of the world depending on how quickly we act, as well as people whose utmost goal seems to be to prevent any progress in his field.

The title of the book refers to a famous graph, which shows a long period of relative stability in average yearly temperatures followed by a spike beginning around the Industrial Revolution. The graph is a powerful image and very suggestive in and of itself that anthropogenic global warming is a reality, and for that reason has been one of the main topics of contention among skeptics.

However, science isn’t about looking at one piece of evidence, but mountains of it. Mann can’t possibly journey through all of the mountains in the space he has available here, but those who read his book will come away from it with little doubt that global warming is real and that we are the cause.

The researchers’ study, released Feb. 24 in Science magazine, shows that as temperatures increased, the size of the earliest horses decreased.

“Especially on a specific scale, what we’ve shown is climate can influence the evolution of mammals in a direct way,” said Johnathan Bloch, co-author and Florida Museum of Natural History associate curator of vertebrate paleontology.

Sifrhippus, the earliest known horse, first appeared about 56 million years ago. The horse lived during a 175,000-year span of global warming, Bloch said.

During this period, temperatures rose about 10 to 20 degrees Fahrenheit.

Horses started out about the size of miniature schnauzers, Bloch said. The researchers used the teeth to measure body size evolution.

The research traced the evolution of the 12-pound horse as it shrank to about 8 pounds — the size of a small house cat, he said. Then the horse’s weight climbed to about 15 pounds.

The size change corresponds to global warming and subsequent cooling.

Researchers also sampled oxygen and carbon atoms with varying masses in the tooth enamel of Coryphodon, which are hoofed animals associated with water environments.

Scientists have a better record of them, said co-author and UF anthropology professor John Krigbaum. The Coryphodon were sampled to get a measure of relative shift in climate.

Krigbaum said masses of the atoms were used to evaluate the changing environment and the animals’ changing diet.

He said the tooth size and atom mass changed similarly over time.

Bloch said it was about seven years ago when co-author Stephen Chester, a UF undergraduate at the time, measured horse teeth and found they weren’t the same size for the whole period. He said it was an obvious pattern as they collected more data.

“It was the first key there was something going on we didn’t know about,” Bloch said.

The ordinance will take effect March 1, 2013 and will prohibit plastic bags and paper bags from being distributed by retailers within Austin city limits. City council will continue to discuss specifics of the ban, and amendments are still possible.

“It has taken us five years to get this passed, starting with our proposal in 2007 to limit and discourage plastic bag use,” Austin Texas Campaign for the Environment program director Andrew Dobbs said. “We have been talking to city council that whole time and all our work has paid off tonight.”

Dobbs said the battle is not over.

“There will be some lobbyists who will try to stop this ban,” Dobbs said. “We still need to figure out certain details of the plan, especially how it is going to be enforced, so some people will try to attack us on that but we just have to keep pushing for it.”

There will be an option to use emergency plastic bags for a fee in case someone forgets their reusable bags. Retailers will determine the fee themselves.

“My knee-jerk reaction to the emergency bag fee is not to get the city involved,” said Mayor Lee Leffingwell.

Jenn Studebaker, a single mother, spoke during the meeting to say she opposes the bag ban because there are not enough facts proving that the new ordinance will be efficient. She also objected to the nature of the meeting because the council did not begin discussing the plastic bag ban until around midnight.

“You call a public hearing at 12 at night, and I have a problem with that,” Studebaker said. “If you look around, there are very few parents here because they are all at home with their kids, so their voices are not being heard.”

The campaign’s executive director Robin Schneider said the bag ban makes sense both environmentally and economically because it will prevent pollution and create a new market for reusable shopping bags.

“The reusable bags will create a new market for those who want to make a fashion statement,” Schneider said. “Some businesses are already looking into making different styles and personalizing the bags. Those who want to just buy the cheapest bags for fifty cents can do that too. It’s just all up to what you’re into.”

Environmentalist Audrey Cravotta said she has worked 50 hours a week for the past two years educating people on the dangers of disposable bags and persuading people not to use them. She said 7,000 Austin residents recently sent letters in support of the bag ban to city council.

“The job of city council is to represent the people of the city,” Cravotta said. “City council would not have fairly represented the people if they did not pass this ordinance because Austin is supposed to be a green city. We need to set an example for the world to be green. If we can do it, so can they.”

Cravotta, along with bag ban supporter Mike Koscielak and three other supporters, arrived at city hall wearing bags on their clothes and on their heads. They described themselves as “bag monsters” representing the evils of disposable bags.

“The thing people need to know is we are monsters and we’ve really become like part of the family,” Koscielak said in the role of a “bag monster.” “We live under the sink and in the garage — right there where your kids play.”

The reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from U.S. power plants in 2009 can be explained by a fall in the price of natural gas, according to an article published last month by researchers at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

The power generation sector, which typically accounts for 40 percent of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions, reduced its greenhouse gas output by 8.76 percent in 2009 relative to 2008, according to the research.

The study found that most of this reduction could be attributed to a shift from coal to natural gas—a change driven by a decrease in gas prices.

“Generating one kilowatt-hour of electricity from coal releases twice as much CO2 to the atmosphere as generating the same amount from natural gas, so a slight shift in the relative prices of coal and natural gas can result in a sharp drop in carbon emissions,” said Michael B. McElroy, the study’s lead researcher, in a press release.

McElroy, an environmental studies professor, published the article with postdoctoral researcher Xi Lu and applied math alumnus Jackson S. Salovaara in the most recent issue of Environmental Science and Technology.

The researchers developed an econometric model that divided the nation into nine different regions to account for differences in the price and patterns of power generation and usage.

Lu said that the study’s results suggest important implications for U.S. environmental and energy policy.

For example, Lu said that even a modest tax on carbon emissions could push power plants to switch to gas, which would further reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Although a carbon tax would affect power plants that use both coal and gas, the higher carbon dioxide output of coal usage would give plants a financial incentive to switch.

Lu said, however, that the article did not fully address the methods used to extract natural gas.

“The main driver of the price decrease in 2009 was from shale gas,” said Lu, referring to natural gas trapped in shale deposits and extracted through the controversial technique of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.”

“We are not in a position to defend shale gas as cleaner,” Lu said about lifetime-cycle greenhouse gas emissions. “It’s a very controversial topic. Some papers argue that shale gas is cleaner than coal, but other people have the opposite opinion.”

In addition to the desirable effects of decreasing carbon dioxide emissions, the article cited several other advantages of using natural gas, regardless of extraction technique. According to the research, those benefits include lower emission rates of other pollutants such as mercury and higher overall efficiency in the power sector.

“The advantage of an increase in the supply of natural gas and an associated decrease in the price of the gas relative to coal is clear,” the study said.

]]>http://uwire.com/2012/03/02/cheaper-natural-gas-reduces-carbon-emissions-study-says/feed/0Column: President Obama, it’s time to drillhttp://uwire.com/2012/03/02/column-president-obama-its-time-to-drill/
http://uwire.com/2012/03/02/column-president-obama-its-time-to-drill/#commentsFri, 02 Mar 2012 11:36:14 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=126716On Feb. 25, 2012, President Obama made his weekly address to the country. The main topic of conversation this week was rising gas prices. As in previous years, rumors are spreading that eventually we will reach $5 per gallon for gas. Obama wanted to assure Americans that drilling for oil by the U.S. is not the answer – however, he is not entirely right. He is correct in that drilling is not a permanent solution to our energy problems, but then again, the same is true about not drilling. The fossil fuels that we currently rely on will run out sometime down the road, but until then it is much better to use our own supply than to be reliant on other, less stable options.

President Obama talks a lot about developing new “greener” energy sources to power our country, but he neglects to address the immediate problem of energy consumption. I agree that new energy sources, specifically nuclear, need to be developed, but there are several issues that first must be overcome before this is feasible. First and foremost, the economics need to be there. Many options that Obama pushes are too expensive, too inefficient, or both. We have yet to develop anything that can, on its own, compete economically with a gas-powered vehicle. The one type of “green” energy that can compete with fossil fuels is nuclear power, but the cost of adapting the principles of fission to consumer vehicles is still far too great. I have no doubt that eventually someone will come up with an economical and environmentally friendly way to power our vehicles, but until then we need to rely on gasoline.

Since we are still far from transitioning from a gas-powered car industry to something better, it makes sense to take advantage of our own oil reserves rather than importing. The U.S. currently imports over 50 percent of the oil that it consumes; this number could be substantially reduced if we opened up our oil reserves, specifically those in the Gulf. Despite the controversy surrounding drilling in the Gulf, the U.S. allows other countries to drill offshore there. Not only would it be safer for the U.S. to do the drilling, it would also drastically reduce the amount of oil we would need to import annually.

The American people need to make it clear to President Obama that we are tired of the same old rhetoric he uses to push green energy. In a perfect world, the U.S. would shift completely from fossil fuel to cleaner sources, but this simply isn’t feasible yet. Unfortunately, in our current economic state we cannot afford to pretend to live in a perfect world, and it is time that President Obama realized this.

]]>http://uwire.com/2012/03/02/column-president-obama-its-time-to-drill/feed/0Column: Politically-based decisions should not influence researchhttp://uwire.com/2012/02/28/column-politically-based-decisions-should-not-influence-research/
http://uwire.com/2012/02/28/column-politically-based-decisions-should-not-influence-research/#commentsTue, 28 Feb 2012 11:44:56 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=125951As a commuter to campus, my last few visits to the pump have been painful. There are already estimates out showing gas is probably going to hit around $5 a gallon this summer, according to a CNBC article. President Barack Obama gave a speech on energy production Thursday at U. Miami, emphasizing the need to focus on renewable energy sources to offset rising gas prices. One of his main talking points was the Energy Department’s new $14 million investment into researching algae as a fuel source, according to a Department of Energy news release.

Although the idea of using algae as a fuel source is new to most people, it has been a popular research topic for a while. The problem with research around algae as a bio-fuel is that though a lot of money is being dumped into the field, the stuff isn’t cheap. The costs of producing algae-based bio-fuel is still way too expensive to compete with the relatively low cost of gasoline production, despite a continually reducing supply of fossil fuels, according to a Reuters article. A lot of the research going into algae are producing other discoveries: Chemists have discovered algae can be used in cosmetics to improve their ability to block sunlight and prevent skin damage, as well as in cookies to produce ingredients with lower saturated fats, according to Reuters. The hope, however, is the $14 million going into research ends up helping GMC and Ford more than Sephora and Sally Field, but that might not happen.

The problem is funding for scientific research into alternative energy has been based less on the feasibility of finding alternatives to existing fuel sources and more on the ability of the idea of exciting voters. But alternative energy decisions based on politics instead of research can and do backfire.

The government invested around $528 million from the first economic stimulus package into Solyndra, a company that specialized in tubular solar paneling, only to lose the investment in September when the company filed chapter 11 bankruptcy, according to a CBS article. There has been a good deal of argument since then as to whether the decision to invest in Solyndra was based more on political motivation to promote alternative energy than sound scientific research. Analysts within the solar industry have said many already knew Solyndra was not a good investment prior to the stimulus due to its inability to compete with cheaper solar paneling from Europe and Asia, according to an article on cnet.com.

So how can we make decisions on what scientific endeavors and research receive funding that is less political and potentially costly? If the decisions were directly in the hands of the general population, the odds of being able to understand some of the topics and make an educated decision on them are slim. Just like a panel of physicists probably wouldn’t be the best group to write the AP style manual, non-experts wouldn’t be able to properly guide the direction research is headed.

Other means of decreasing the influence of elected politicians might involve the public using some sort of democratic mechanism to decide what end result they would like to see and then having experts and professionals within specific disciplines helping to achieve these goals. However, any possibility of this happening or of finding alternatives to rising fuel costs is going to depend on the willingness of the political class in this country to put aside partisan motives and embrace scientific realities and findings objectively, without putting their political careers first. Just to be safe, I will be riding my bike to campus.

]]>http://uwire.com/2012/02/28/column-politically-based-decisions-should-not-influence-research/feed/0Column: Atomic energy not the answerhttp://uwire.com/2012/02/21/column-atomic-energy-not-the-answer/
http://uwire.com/2012/02/21/column-atomic-energy-not-the-answer/#commentsTue, 21 Feb 2012 17:36:37 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=124771Once upon a time, nuclear energy was just a domineering question mark. Its variables, limits and potentials were only a matter of speculation, without any variables to draw from, and the more curious nations resembled first time bike riders. Their neighbors, the tropical agriculturalists, tentative Easterners and cross-eyed Westerners would watch to see how they fared from their respective living rooms, while somewhat interested, but not enough to dip their toes in.

They saw single speeds, hybrids and city bikes, noting how they fared in traffic and the durability of the paint. There would be mental notes when they fell, with crossed fingers at the intersections. Inevitably, in the face of an accident, the mantra rose that it wouldn’t ever happen to them.

The kids have grown and we’ve seen that. For all of our concerns with the nuclear activity on adjacent shores, we’ve turned blind eyes to our own. Nuclear plants in this country resemble the aforementioned bikes, sans kickstands, breaks, or an adjustable steering wheel. From the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station in Arizona to our very own South Texas Nuclear Generating Station, the plants, as well as their surrounding areas, have almost certainly been accompanied with their own respective time bombs. The magic question isn’t if they’ll find themselves in jeopardy, but when.

If a reason is needed to re-evaluate our nuclear stance, you’d only need to turn to the 1984 incident in Athens, Ala., which resulted in a six-year outage in the area, and was immediately followed by another incident in the same area the following year.

Or Plymouth, Mass. in 1986, yielding an emergency shutdown of the plant and a shadow that still looms over the area. Or Chernobyl, Ukraine; Idaho Falls; Leningrad Oblast or Oak Harbor, Ohio.

Most recently, the three-fold disaster in Japan demonstrated the unforgiving nature of nuclear slip-ups, killing three workers, and rendering parts of the country unlivable for at least the next couple of years.

Even still, there are opponents to a shut down, with their reasons in tow. “Nuclear energy is more efficient;” “It’s less wasteful in the long run;” “Once the ball’s rolling, the increase in productivity is exponential” and, maybe the most recurrent of all, “Nuclear energy is the future.”

But whose future, exactly? More than negligent, it is stupid to say that these factors, along with countless others, justify the potential disarray our entanglement with nuclear endeavors entails.

After the incident on Three Mile Island in 1979, during which radioactive gases and iodine were released into Dauphin County, Pa., the public’s nuclear endorsement dropped to 43 percent. Last year’s “accident” in Fukushima knocked the bar even lower, so that “64 percent of Americans opposed the construction of new nuclear reactors.”

It’s a start, but if these are the magnitudes required to raise awareness, it’d be a tragedy to find out what would result in a unanimous approval.

With more than 100 nuclear plants still operating in the nation, it’s a terrible method for punctuating progress.

]]>http://uwire.com/2012/02/21/column-atomic-energy-not-the-answer/feed/0Northeastern U., U. Connecticut ranked among greenest college campuses in worldhttp://uwire.com/2012/02/17/northeastern-u-u-connecticut-ranked-among-greenest-college-campuses-in-world/
http://uwire.com/2012/02/17/northeastern-u-u-connecticut-ranked-among-greenest-college-campuses-in-world/#commentsFri, 17 Feb 2012 18:59:06 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=124283According to a list published by Universitas Indonesia in December, U. Connecticut is the third-greenest college campus in the world.

UI’s GreenMetric World University Ranking listed only Nottingham U. (UK) and Northeastern U. in Boston ahead of UConn. Schools accumulated points in the rankings based on five categories: setting and infrastructure, energy and climate change, waste, water, and transportation. UConn received a score of 7,708, behind Nottingham’s 8,033 and Northeastern’s 7,981.

The calculation relies on information provided by the 178 universities contacted by UI to participate in the ranking. The researchers tried to establish “a picture about how the university is responding to or dealing with the issue of sustainability through policies, actions, and communication,” according to the GreenMetric website.

The researchers also looked at setting (urban versus rural) and zoning policies as a measure of land use. “We want to see the degree of green space,” they said. The criteria were selected to try and produce a picture of how concerned survey respondents were with reducing environmental impact.

A commitment to environmental sustainability is in greater demand among today’s college applicants.

Among respondents to a 2011 Princeton Review survey, “69 percent said having information about a college’s commitment to the environment would impact their decision to apply to or attend a school.”

UConn was also named by the Princeton Review, as well as the U.S. Green Building Council, as one of America’s most eco-friendly colleges.

Director of environmental policy Richard Miller told UConn Today, “We can be proud that UConn is emerging as a true leader for its environmental policies, practices, and sustainability initiatives. We realize, as the survey results show, that there are still many areas for improvement, but we’re definitely headed in the right direction.”

He went on to say that UConn hopes to use its ranking to facilitate improvement in sustainability both here and at other schools, saying UConn could “help, advise and mentor other colleges around the world, especially through our involvement in Universitas 21.” He also congratulated schools in poorer countries that made the list and admired their effort in facing “unusually difficult challenges when it comes to implementing campus sustainability programs.”

The Office of Environmental Policy continues to work to minimize the university’s environmental impact with new initiatives in 2012 and beyond. According to UConn Today, some of these projects include taking the Depot Campus off the energy grid with a 400-kilowatt, clean-energy fuel cell; an electric campus delivery vehicle fleet; and composting units at two dining halls.

New construction projects such as the Classroom Building, East Building, and Storrs Hall Annex were all designed with LEED certification in mind, and many recent buildings achieved LEED status as well.

]]>http://uwire.com/2012/02/17/northeastern-u-u-connecticut-ranked-among-greenest-college-campuses-in-world/feed/0Column: A green economyhttp://uwire.com/2012/02/17/column-a-green-economy/
http://uwire.com/2012/02/17/column-a-green-economy/#commentsFri, 17 Feb 2012 17:36:00 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=124256Environmental rhetoric is riddled with fluffy promises about green jobs, green economies, and green governments. These issues may seem simply nebulous and unimportant concepts. Yet the Massachusetts state government is now poised to lead its constituents towards a true green economy.

Students for a Just and Stable Future, a political advocacy group on campus, lobbied to create the first environmental caucus—the Green Economy Caucus—in the Massachusetts State Legislature last year. The purpose of the caucus is to “promote legislation and policy that encourage economic growth and job creation based on sustainable development aimed at improving economic, environmental and social well-being.” This caucus, a victory for SJSF, represents student involvement in the government and the commitment of politicians to act on climate change mitigation. The first Caucus meeting was on February 13, and represents an historic achievement for Massachusetts legislators. The meeting was an enormous success, with about 50 legislators and aides present, and lends hope for future political processes.

The United Nations Environment Programme defines a green economy as “improved human well-being and social equity, while significantly reducing environmental risks and ecological scarcities.” According to Mihir Chaudhary, leader of SJSF, the “Green Economy Caucus represents the first cohesive political attempt to develop a ‘transition’ to a post-carbon economy. We do not know what that economy will look like, but this is where the true potential of this legislative forum works.”

So, why does anyone care about a green economy? Climate change has an undeniable impact on our way of life. Everyone has heard the statistics: The Northeast has warmed half a degree Fahrenheit per decade since 1970. The numbers of days over 90 degrees Fahrenheit in Massachusetts is expected to increase from between five and 20 days to between 30 and 60 days. Ocean temperatures in the Northeast Atlantic are expected to increase up to eight degrees Fahrenheit due to climate change. These numbers seem abstract, but the realities they represent pose a significant threat to agriculture, fishing industries, tourism, health, and communities—the foundations of our economy.

For example, agriculture—a $94 million per year industry in Massachusetts—will see decreased yields due to higher summer temperatures. This means crop failure and increased pests and weeds. Marine species will move further north to colder waters, jeopardizing the coastal fishing industry. Skiing and snowmobiling industries will be severely affected by decreasing snowfall and shorter seasons. Residents with asthma will face greater risks as air quality worsens. Mosquitoes will become more widespread, acting as vectors for diseases. The list goes on.

This may seem like a hopeless situation, but it is not. The challenges facing society and individuals are also opportunities for change. Humanity has the tools to maintain a high-quality of life and live within ecological limits. Climate change is not an unsolvable issue. Individuals are taking action around the world to decrease their carbon footprint and live in an environmentally and socially just way. Of equal importance is government’s ability to create meaningful legislation that can reduce dependence on fossil fuels and develop viable alternatives. The Green Economy Caucus is an example of this kind of progress. Hopefully it will serve as a model for other states.

Ideally, the Caucus will develop its own legislation and vote on policies as a bloc. Members will become educated on the importance of a green economy and promote legislation that will advance technological and economic progress. For example, there is already a bill in the state legislature to phase-out coal in Massachusetts by 2015. Frank Smizik and James Eldridge, the co-chairs of the Caucus, are also working to increase usage of green technology 25 percent above 2010 levels by 2020.

These bills, focusing on truly stopping climate change, are a result of the type of coalitions that the Green Energy Caucus will strengthen. Alli Welton, another SJSF member, notes that “people often get the sense that the environmental movement opposes the interests of business and labor—but this Caucus will show that it doesn’t have to be this way.”

The Massachusetts Legislature is active and impassioned. The Green Economy Caucus, founded as a result of student advocacy, will increase the Legislature’s impact by bringing together people from all sectors—health, labor, economic, and environmental—and uniting them in a common interest. This is political change in the making.

]]>http://uwire.com/2012/02/17/column-a-green-economy/feed/0Evolving climate patterns to cause more storms, study sayshttp://uwire.com/2012/02/16/evolving-climate-patterns-to-cause-more-storms-study-says/
http://uwire.com/2012/02/16/evolving-climate-patterns-to-cause-more-storms-study-says/#commentsThu, 16 Feb 2012 18:50:18 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=124050Changing climate patterns could cause more storms and water surges for low-lying cities such as Boston, according to experts and a study published Feb. 14 in Nature Climate Change.

The study, “Physically Based Assessment of Hurricane Surges under Climate Change,” used climate models and two hydrodynamic models to determine the storm surge for New York under different weather conditions.

It used present and predicted climate conditions with hydrodynamic models, which create forecasts for different coastal areas to determine the risk of surge threat.

The study also concluded the effect of “storm climatology change” and sea-level rise would cause floods to happen more often. Flooding in New York that usually occurs only once every 100 years may occur once every 20 years.

Research over the years has predicted the average maximum winds and rainfall of tropical cyclones in a warmer climate will increase, according to the study.

But the effect of climate change on hurricane size has still not been investigated, according to the study. Some models predicted more severe storm surges than others. The regional storm frequency also affects the surge risk.

Rob Garrity, executive director of the Massachusetts Climate Action Network, said he is not surprised about the new data.

“It makes a lot of sense,” Garrity said. “There is a lot more heat energy in the atmosphere due to global warming and so there will be larger storms.”

It is difficult to completely measure the impact that climate change could have on hurricane surges, according to the study, and high-resolution models of hurricane surges are expensive and limited.

Garrity said he agreed the government should be funding or sponsoring technology, but there are parts of government that have been aware of these problems for years.

“The Deer Island Wastewater Treatment Plant was built several feet higher to account for higher sea levels,” he said.

Garrity said Boston, as a low-lying city, is “very susceptible” to flooding.

The danger of climate change is hard for people to comprehend because it is so outside of their experience, Garrity said.

“People expect the world to work pretty much the way it always has,” he said. “They do not expect such a dramatic change within their lifetime.”

]]>http://uwire.com/2012/02/16/evolving-climate-patterns-to-cause-more-storms-study-says/feed/0Wind turbines harmful to health, Massachusetts residents sayhttp://uwire.com/2012/02/15/wind-turbines-harmful-to-health-massachusetts-residents-say/
http://uwire.com/2012/02/15/wind-turbines-harmful-to-health-massachusetts-residents-say/#commentsWed, 15 Feb 2012 16:19:00 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=123756Although they provide cleaner energy, wind turbines may be damaging to the health of people who live near them, according to recent testimonies.

Members of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection and Department of Public Health received mixed reviews at the Massachusetts State House on Tuesday from residents living near wind turbines.

The discussion was the first of the three public hearings about a recent report on the potential health effects associated with proximity to wind turbines.

“Over the last year and a half, we have heard some reports that people were experiencing health or other types of problems they believe are associated with living near wind turbines,” said MassDEP Commissioner Kenneth Kimmell to the audience in the Gardner Auditorium at the State House.

He said the reports prompted MassDEP commissioners to start a “fact-finding mission.”

They compiled an independent, scientific panel of bachelors from various disciplines to perform a scientific review using protocols of the National Academy of Sciences, Kimmell said.

This, he said, was intended to help give MassDEP a sense of what the literature tells them about wind turbines’ potential health effects.

Opponents of the report’s findings said the noise, vibrations and shadow flickers from the wind turbines do indeed have health impacts on residents.

This contradicts the findings that said there was “insufficient epidemiologic evidence” to determine “an association between noise from wind turbines and measures of psychological distress or mental health problems,” according to the report.

Neil Andersen, of Falmouth, was the first to speak on behalf of those affected by the turbines.

“By ignoring those of us in Falmouth and excluding most of our supporting literature and testimonials,” Andersen said, “this so-called health study has done a great injustice to the citizens of this Commonwealth.”

Andersen said he lives a quarter mile from the 500-foot tall structures with eight-ton rotating blades and that there have been thousands of complaints since their installation.

“It is certainly obvious that there are quite a few people who aren’t doing their jobs,” Andersen said.

Professor Wendy Heiger-Bernays, of Boston U.’s School of Public Health, said this is a complex issue the panel has spent many months studying, according to a State House press release.

“By reviewing the available data and information, we believe that we have significantly added to the understanding of the potential for health effects from wind turbines,” she said.

The panel included three BU professors.

Andersen said the wind turbines “do not belong anywhere near neighborhoods” because they make people sick.

He gave examples of his own headaches, heart palpitations, vertigo and more health complications that have disappeared since the turbines were turned off in November.

“We cannot get used to it,” Andersen said. “There is no compromise. There is no mitigation.”

But members of Northeastern U.’s Wind Action Committee said MassDEP should adopt the conclusions of the study.

WAC Founder Emily Rochon, of Dorchester, said to the panel that the wind turbines are far safer and cleaner than other sources of power.

Other supporters of the independent report, including members from New England’s Environmental Business Council, said it was well conceived and has attainable goals.

Still, residents said anecdotal evidence must be taken into consideration.

Former environmental science student Kathryn Elder, of Falmouth, said she lives 1,700 feet from a wind turbine and that her life has been turned upside-down by the turbine because it has been built too close to her house.

“It is not my perception, it is not my opinion and it is certainly not annoyance that wakes me up repeatedly at night,” Elder said to the panel. “Members of my family . . . have extreme anxiety and other physical issues in response to being close to the turbine.”

]]>http://uwire.com/2012/02/15/wind-turbines-harmful-to-health-massachusetts-residents-say/feed/0Column: Global warming and future conflicthttp://uwire.com/2012/02/15/column-global-warming-and-future-conflict/
http://uwire.com/2012/02/15/column-global-warming-and-future-conflict/#commentsWed, 15 Feb 2012 15:55:02 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=123751Though the majority of the scientific community has reached a consensus that climate change is a real phenomenon and life-threatening problem, there are many ideas of what the “worst case” could look like. Some scientists argue that certain areas have already hit a tipping point; for example, species are dying out at an unprecedented rate, and diversity will probably never be the same again. In addition, the environmental changes caused by climate change — diminishing water resources, changing rain patterns, diminishing crop returns — are already producing social consequences.

Migrations of people looking for life-sustaining resources can become a political weapon or capacity swamp on a neighboring nation, creating tensions with their neighbors and potentially provoking war. Internally, tensions between different ethnic groups who already are in conflict will be exacerbated as they battle for grazing land and clean water. Scarcity of resources will become yet another reason for conflict against old enemies.

Changing temperatures won’t just make some parts of the world hotter; others will grow cooler. Rains will come not in monsoon seasons but in intermittent downpours that destroy topsoil by washing it away rather than enriching it over the course of the rainy season. Decreased soil richness and changing climate patterns will lead to decreased crop yields; prices for grains will rise, a known cause of political unrest due to rising food prices.

Though there are ways to mitigate and potentially reverse some of the adverse effects of climate change, these are not widely practiced. Bringing these low-use techniques into widespread use will take both time and political will. With the accelerating pace of climate change, there may not be time for these necessary preconditions to come into force. Indeed, there are still climate change deniers. The countries most able to affect greenhouse gas outputs (like the U.S.) are the ones doing very little about these problems and even denying their existence. Furthermore, the economic gain possible when using harmful chemicals and energy techniques eliminates incentives for change amongst these powerful countries. They are growing richer while resources dwindle and conflict rises.

Darfur is widely considered the first climate change war. Though the conflict stemmed from long-seated ethnic rivalries, a secondary but important issue was the lack of water in the region. This scarce resource was one reason for a continuation of the conflict; none of the warring parties wanted to give up the access to more resources, which could have been won by the expansion of their territory.

Then there is the imminent danger of rising water levels and the inevitable destruction of low-laying nations. Small countries such as the Maldives and Kiribati (near the Hawaiian Islands) face this danger, as do much larger nations like Egypt and the Philippines. The future of the citizens and governments of these states is yet to be determined. Should they be given land from neighboring countries for their citizens to live on? Would that undermine the sovereignty of those nations? The interactions of these fast disappearing nations with the international community pose vast problems. The resettlements could outnumber any current immigration seen today. The population of the Philippines alone is nearly 102 million; total world immigration for 2011 was estimated as 214 million. Imagine the effects on world politics of adding an additional 102 million immigrants to the annual total.

Global warming will be difficult if not impossible to reverse; however, we should encourage ecological initiatives to abate our negative impact. Furthermore, given the difficult future of a changing world system, climate change needs to be addressed as a serious, real and fast advancing political and social issue. The process of global warming is inevitable as we cannot just vacuum up the CO2 in the atmosphere, which has increased to the highest recorded levels in 2 million years — but we can prepare ourselves for the strenuous, politically uncertain and culturally unstable future of a warmer and potentially more conflict-ridden world.

]]>http://uwire.com/2012/02/15/column-global-warming-and-future-conflict/feed/0Unusual pollution research studies whale earwaxhttp://uwire.com/2012/02/14/unusual-pollution-research-studies-whale-earwax/
http://uwire.com/2012/02/14/unusual-pollution-research-studies-whale-earwax/#commentsTue, 14 Feb 2012 15:35:54 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=123509Whale earwax is not a topic that usually comes up on a walk to get coffee, but it did for Baylor U. researchers Dr. Stephen Trumble, assistant professor of biology, and Dr. Sascha Usenko, assistant professor of environmental science.

They were trying to answer one student’s question, which led them to recently come up with a new way to study contaminants in the ocean using whale earwax.

A student had been looking at some bowhead whale sample, and asked how to determine a whale’s age, Trumble said.

He was thinking about it during a walk to Starbucks, began discussing it with Usenko and came up with ear plugs — the built-up wax that whales develop during their lifetime.

Since whales keep their earwax in their skull from birth until death, it can act like the rings in a tree trunk for aging.

Trumble wondered if the plugs could be used for other purposes too, he said.

He called a colleague from the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., and together with the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History they agreed to donate some samples of ear plugs for research.

Trumble, Usenko and graduate student Eleanor Robinson discovered that by examining the wax, they can measure the whale’s exposure to pollutants and know if the contaminants affected its physiology, Trumble said.

“You have to cut it in half, shave off layer after layer, do a lot of lipid extraction,” Trumble said. “It’s not easy; it’s very tedious.”

He also said it is difficult to find samples because they have to be removed from a dead whale’s skull, while blubber can be sampled in a biopsy.

“But the ear wax gives a lifetime profile from birth to death, and blubber only gives a snapshot from the last couple months,” Trumble said.

“You can’t get something this detailed from any other living organism that I know of,” he said.

So far, the team has found several pesticides and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in the wax.

Usenko said that some pesticides are natural and some are man-made, and they can travel through the environment into the oceans.

They are studying the possible correlation between these chemicals and the whales’ stress levels and physiology using cortisol, a stress hormone.

Trumble has been studying the cortisol levels to see if the increase in chemicals has an impact on the whale’s life, or if whales that migrate through shipping routes and have more contact with humans and contaminants are more stressed than normal, he said.

The main conclusion that can be drawn right now is that ear wax can be used to study the things that blubber is usually used for, Usenko said, but the researchers are hoping it will lead to more information about the chemical profiles in the environment.

Trumble has been studying the hormones in the wax. Cortisol, a stress hormone, can be measured to see if the increase in contaminants has an impact on the whale’s life, or if whales that migrate through shipping routes and have more contact with humans and contaminants are more stressed than normal, he said.

There is a finite number of samples, Trumble said, but the team is hoping to find more wax sample donors so that they can continue their research.

“We’ve already gotten the okay from national museums in London, and we’re looking at Japan and Russia,” he said. “I suspect people will try to jump on the band wagon, but we’re trying to strike the sample world now and get what we can.”

Trumble also said the researchers are entertaining the idea of doing a similar study in humans, but it will be different because humans’ ear wax is exposed to the environment and a lifetime sample can’t be obtained. They would have to study short term samples instead of a lifelong history.

Their research has been featured in Science Magazine, a national publication for the scientific world.

“It’s a unique opportunity [to be in Science],” Usenko said. “It shows that high quality research can happen at Baylor, and puts us on a national stage. It’s a big deal.”

]]>http://uwire.com/2012/02/14/unusual-pollution-research-studies-whale-earwax/feed/0Study: Obama mentioning climate change far less in speecheshttp://uwire.com/2012/02/10/study-obama-mentioning-climate-change-far-less-in-speeches/
http://uwire.com/2012/02/10/study-obama-mentioning-climate-change-far-less-in-speeches/#commentsFri, 10 Feb 2012 17:03:53 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=122931Last summer, Brown U. senior Graciela Kincaid was digging around for White House budget statistics on climate finance policy as part of her Undergraduate Teaching and Research Award when she stumbled across something that caught her attention.

“I started looking at speeches online and just out of curiosity started doing word searches on them,” she said.

Poring over speeches and press releases of the Obama administration’s top officials, Kincaid compared the number of times officials referred to “climate change” versus the number of times they cited “clean energy.” Intrigued by the possibility of exploring rhetorical trends, Kincaid mentioned the project off-hand to her mentor, J. Timmons Roberts, professor of sociology and environmental studies and director of Brown’s Climate and Development Lab. Roberts encouraged Kincaid to follow through on the project, and Kincaid “was off to the races,” Roberts said.

Comparing the number of times the word “energy” was mentioned compared to “climate” during the Obama presidency, she found an average ratio of 7.6:1, meaning for every seven times energy was referred to, climate was mentioned once. The ratio has doubled in magnitude between 2009 and 2011, according to Kincaid’s study.

“Her study is totally new, really, because nobody had tracked how much climate change was being spoken of by the administration,” Roberts said. “We all sort of noticed that he’d stopped talking about it.”

In his 2011 State of the Union address President Obama referred to energy nine times but steered completely clear of the words “climate change.”

What the president says signals his agenda and his priorities and sets the tone of the general debate, Kincaid said.

“It’s like talking the talk and walking the walk,” she added. “If he doesn’t talk about it, there’s just this silence that isn’t going to be filled.”

Obama’s change in rhetoric is largely due to the increasingly polarized political climate, Kincaid said. Climate change was mentioned most frequently in December 2009, when Obama attended the Copenhagen Summit. But the midterm elections of 2010 resulted in a stronger conservative influence in Congress, and factors such as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, negative public opinion surveys and failure of cap-and-trade policies in Congress have struck a huge blow to hopes of domestic climate change policy, Kincaid said.

After analyzing her results, Kincaid offered to sell the study to several blogs but was rejected. Instead, she decided to publish her findings on the recent startup blog of the Climate and Development Lab.

“The study ended up getting a lot more attention than we thought it would,” Kincaid said. Kincaid’s article quickly became the blog’s most viewed link — and important players were noticing.

The New York Times found Kincaid’s study and tipped off several professionals at other universities, said Max Boykoff, professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder and a research fellow at Colorado’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. After checking out the study himself, Boykoff deemed Kincaid’s systematic examination of rhetoric “constructive” and published an opinion piece entitled, “A dangerous shift in Obama’s ‘climate change’ rhetoric,” in the Washington Post Jan. 27.

“The argument I make is supported by the data (Kincaid) had gathered,” Boykoff said. “It’s only when someone systematically looks at these issues that we gain a greater appreciation for the larger patterns taking place.”

Obama’s change in rhetoric is an adaptation to political conditions in Washington D.C., Boykoff said.

“Climate change in the U.S. has become such a politically polarizing issue,” he added. “Other issues such as energy efficiency and switching to renewables actually do appeal to people across the spectrum. Maybe Obama and his staff are attuning to these trends and are adjusting their language accordingly.”

Rhetorical fine-tuning is especially important as election time nears, said Shawn Patterson ’12, president of the Brown Democrats.

“It’s hard to come out against clean energy,” he added. Obama’s move is a “bipartisan attempt to make progress in the direction he wants to go in addressing climate change,” while taking the Republican majority in the House into account. Obama doesn’t want to waste political capital on projects that aren’t going to get anywhere, Patterson said.

The political flipside is slightly more critical.

“As we get closer and closer to election time, Obama is under pressure to show that he’s actually been doing something in office,” said Terrence George, president of the Republican Club of Brown University. “I think he’s trying to push more popular things closer to election time. Global warming is still a contentious issue, but energy production isn’t quite so much.”

Kincaid said she is disappointed that Obama has never used the bully pulpit when it comes to climate change. But as she spoke with White House staffers during the course of her research, she said she was pleasantly surprised to find that climate change is a personal issue for the president.

“That made me feel good and like I wasn’t just being really idealistic in hoping that my president cared about climate change,” Kincaid said.

Kincaid’s study will be presented at the American Sociological Association’s annual meeting in Denver this August. Until then, she will continue to fine-tune her study and said she is hoping to publish in a professional journal in time to “catch the wave” before election time.

]]>http://uwire.com/2012/02/10/study-obama-mentioning-climate-change-far-less-in-speeches/feed/0U. Vermont to end sale of bottled waterhttp://uwire.com/2012/02/01/u-vermont-to-end-sale-of-bottled-water/
http://uwire.com/2012/02/01/u-vermont-to-end-sale-of-bottled-water/#commentsWed, 01 Feb 2012 19:26:34 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=121220The sale of bottled water on campus will end in January 2013, making U. Vermont one of the first institutions nationwide to pass this type of sustainable beverage policy, according to University Communications.

UVM will remove bottled water from its 57 vending machines and in retail outlets and will also mandate that one-third of the drinks in vending machines be healthy choices,University Communications stated.

Though the administration made this decision, Director for the Office of Sustainability Gioia Thompson said that student groups such as Vermont Student Environmental Program (VSTEP) really led the way.

“In 2010 and 2011, Mikayla McDonald and Marlee Baron each served as both VSTEP president and SGA senator,” Thompson said. ”They were key in connecting with SGA committees and leaders, who responded with resolutions.”

Thompson also said that UVM’s campus has 200 water fountains that can easily be retrofitted with water bottle filling stations like the ones in the Davis Center, for about $300 each.

“Other fountains will need to be replaced, costing in the thousands,” she said. “There may be some new fountain locations requiring new plumbing, as is the case in the Waterman building’s recent fountain upgrade.”

People will also be able to get free water and buy cups or reusable bottles at the retail dining locations across campus, Thompson said.

President of VSTEP, Greg Francese, said that his club has worked directly with the Office of Sustainability and student organizations in order to educate the University community about environmental issues such as the impact of bottled water.

Francese said that VSTEP’s main goal for the past five years has been banning the sale of bottled water, introducing campaigns such as Bring Your Own Bottle days in which VSTEP encouraged students not to buy bottled water for one day.

“We wanted people to think about why they’re purchasing bottled water,” he said. “The way we’ve done that is basically just by educating people about why you can get virtually the same product for free out of a water fountain.”

Though the decision to end sales of bottled water on campus is finally official, Francese said the news has not sunk in yet.

“It feels surreal, I guess it hasn’t really hit me yet,” he said. “There’s been a lot of congratulatory emails, and I got interviewed by one of the local news stations, but it just doesn’t feel like it’s happening.

“When it happens it will be great,” he said.

Former VSTEP president Mikayla McDonald said that she is very supportive UVM’s decision to let the Coke contract expire and to remove the sale bottled water from campus.

“UVM has shown great leadership with this action and will undoubtedly motivate students in other American colleges and universities to take similar initiatives,” she said.

]]>http://uwire.com/2012/02/01/u-vermont-to-end-sale-of-bottled-water/feed/0Column: The other cause behind global warminghttp://uwire.com/2012/01/31/column-the-other-cause-behind-global-warming/
http://uwire.com/2012/01/31/column-the-other-cause-behind-global-warming/#commentsTue, 31 Jan 2012 18:27:44 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=120987There is no more denying that global warming is real. Melting ice caps, rising ocean levels, growth of deserts and increases in global temperatures are all proof that the planet is getting warmer.

However, the debate over the cause of the warming remains. Many scientists argue that artificial expulsion of carbon dioxide and methane from fossil fuel burning and deforestation are creating an enhanced green-house effect in Earth’s atmosphere, and consequently causing warming.

However, I believe that the recent public outbreak to stop global warming is no more than a publicity stunt put on by giant corporations to popularize “anti-warming” technologies. Industry figureheads such Al Gore are preying on the conscience of innocent civilians by using hysteria to manipulate the masses and drive up profit margins.

It soon becomes clear, Gore, that this is a “Convenient Truth.” One so convenient, that according to the The Telegraph, you are poised to become the first “carbon-billionaire.”

This atrocious idea, that Gore and others are supporting global issues with hidden financial agendas, led me to search for my own answers. After much research, I have come to the conclusion that global warming is caused by Milankovitch climatic oscillations — or MCO — and solar cycles, not human greenhouse gas emissions.

First, let’s analyze what Gore and “green-energy” supporters stand to gain. The New York Times report that Gore’s venture capital firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, invested $75 million in Silver Springs Networks, an electric grid hardware and software company in 2008. Later in 2009, the Department of Energy passed $3.4 billion in smart grid grants, $560 million of which went to Silver Springs contracts. Conflict of interest? I think so.

Additionally, Gore’s film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” ranks third in all-time earnings for documentaries, raking in $49 million worldwide. Gore and others, are direct beneficiaries of the greatest hoax the world has ever seen.

So if humans aren’t the problem, then what’s cooking our planet?

Matt Dynesius and Roland Jansson, researchers for the National Academy of Science, published a paper titled “Evolutionary consequences of changes in species’ geographical distributions driven by Milankovitch climatic oscillations” in 2000. It states that MCOs are variations that occur every 10,000-100,000 years. Dynesius and Jansson divide MCOs more specifically into the change in the obliquity of the earth’s axis, eccentricity of the earth’s orbit and annual timing of the Earth-sun minimum distance, which consequently affect earth’s climate.

The obliquity of the Earth’s axis refers to the direction the earth’s magnetic poles are oriented. The Earth’s axis can be changed gradually overtime or in massive expositions of nature such as the 2011 Japan earthquake that shifted the Earth’s axis by 10 cm. The eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit refers to the irregularity of the shape of the Earth’s orbit. According to Dynesius and Jansson, the obliquity of the Earth changes within a 41,000-year period, the eccentricity of the Earth varies within a 100,000-year period, and the Earth-Sun distance fluctuates within a 21,000-year period.

They go on to explain that “orbital oscillations cause variation in insulation that, combined with earthbound feedbacks, produce large and rapid changes in temperature and precipitation… The 41,000 and 100,000 oscillations cause larger temperature changes toward the poles.” According to National Geographic, current temperature increases have been recorded closest towards the poles of the earth. Therefore, according to their findings, the current increase in global temperature coincide with MCO theory.

The primary objective of Dynesius and Jansson’s paper is to present a concept called “orbitally forced species dynamics.” This term explains how the obliquity of the Earth and the eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit affect both the evolution of life on Earth and the survivability of such life. This concept should solve discrepancies in the different geological eras humans have discovered through archeological research.

For instance, according to archeological fossil records, “The mean duration of a species in the fossil record varies among taxa from about one to 30 million years, implying that they possess properties that allow them to survive many Milankovitch oscillations.” According to the United States Geological survey, the Earth is approximately 4.54 billion years old. When these two figures are combined, they show that even the most supreme evolutionary beings to ever live on Earth only lived for approximately .02-.66 percent of Earth’s total existence.

Based on calculations of species duration (maximum of 30 million years) and MCO frequency (minimum of every 10,000 years and a maximum of every 100,000 years), the most evolutionary sophisticated species to walk the Earth experienced 300-3000 MCO fluctuations before abdicating extinction. According to an article published by Universe Today, humans have been on Earth for about 200,000 years, but recorded history only dates back 6,000 years. By this same calculation, humans have experienced between two and four MCOs.

According to Science Daily, the most modern account of dramatic climatic fluctuation was the last ice age, which occurred approximately 13,000 years ago. This makes sense, because according to Dynesius and Jansson, MCO fluctuations occur at a minimum of 10,000 years, which strongly suggests that we are entering another phase of heavy MCO fluctuation. By this account, relatively rapid changes in global temperature and climatic conditions can be attributed not to human causes, but to natural MCO cycles that have been archeologically proven to exist.

The Earth has its natural cycles, but so does the sun. According to National Geographic, “Simultaneous warming on Earth and Mars suggests that our planet’s recent climatic changes have a natural — and not a human-induced — cause.” Data from NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor and Odyssey Missions in 2005, demonstrated that Mars’s southern carbon dioxide ice caps had been melting for three consecutive summers. The warming cannot be explained by the greenhouse effect, simply because Mars has no atmosphere.

Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of space research at St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, believes simultaneous warming of Mars and Earth is evidence that our current climate change is caused by the sun. Abdussamatov goes on to state, “The solar irradiance began to drop in the 1990s, and a minimum will be reached by approximately 2040…It will cause a steep cooling of the climate on Earth in 15 to 20 years.”

The current symptoms of global warming we are experiencing today are only the lingering effects of a century of high solar irradiance. With solar activity in decline, a cooling phase will set in and give Abdussamatov’s claims empirical support.

According to E.N Parker, author for the scientific journal Nature, the magnetic field of the sun has doubled in the past century and the number of sunspots has doubled over the same period of time. By this accord, the rising global temperatures during the last century are due to this solar variance. The fact that carbon dioxide levels are correlated with rising temperatures must therefore be coincidence.

Fossil-fuel emissions and deforestation are prevalent issues because of their ecological impacts with respect to heavy pollution and habitat destruction. However, their correlation with global warming is simply a skewed misrepresentation of scientific evidence. Natural theories of climatic variance such as Milankovich climate oscillations and solar cycles provide explanations for recent warming trends.

Before we condemn ourselves as the most ecologically-destructive species in our planet’s history, let’s educate ourselves on the natural explanations for our planet’s warming, and hence avoid falling into the economical snare set by anti-warming industry leaders.

]]>http://uwire.com/2012/01/31/column-the-other-cause-behind-global-warming/feed/0Column: Obama should take his cues from Brazilian president Rousseffhttp://uwire.com/2012/01/31/column-obama-should-take-his-cues-from-brazilian-president-rousseff/
http://uwire.com/2012/01/31/column-obama-should-take-his-cues-from-brazilian-president-rousseff/#commentsTue, 31 Jan 2012 16:57:08 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=120980The Brazilian people elected Dilma Rousseff, the country’s first woman President, to office in 2010. She may be the world’s most powerful woman, holding the reins to Brazil’s optimistic yet cautious economy. Her courageous leadership is beginning to shine despite only being in office for a little over a year.

Last Friday she spoke at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, about a “renewal of ideas” on the front of sustainable development. As she spoke about the importance of exploring new energy options at the Rio 20 summit this coming June, President Obama gave a speech in Las Vegas the same day that can help us understand what Rousseff meant by a growing “dissonance in between the voice of the markets and the voice of the streets” in developed countries.

“We have enough natural gas under our feet to last us one hundred years,” Obama said with rigor. “We, as it turns out, are the Saudi Arabia of natural gas.”

What ever happened to creating a green economy relying on renewable energy which he spoke so convincingly of during the 2008 campaign? And I don’t mean “green” in the way oil companies spout about on television commercials. When we said we wanted to kick our addiction to foreign oil, it didn’t mean start chugging our own natural gas.

If you keep up with political affairs, you may have also come to the sober conclusion that the Obama of 2012 is different than Obama the “community organizer” of inner city Chicago.

Rousseff, to her credit, took her devotion a few steps further in her early political career: In her 20s she became a Marxist urban guerrilla fighting the military dictatorship that paralyzed Brazil from 1964 to 1985. She was eventually arrested by the military in 1970 and was tortured by her captors.

Although today she is more of a pragmatic social capitalist, she is proud of her revolutionary heritage and, as president, approved of an investigation on the abuses that took place during the dictatorship. “Secrecy will never again be used to hide the abuse of human rights,” she said in 2011. Bush and Cheney should feel very lucky that their torturous regime wasn’t followed by Rousseff. And she doesn’t stop with abuses that happened many years ago.

Within a span of six months she sent six government officials packing as a result of corruption scandals. Though none have been convicted of crimes, the record number officials she has forced out of her administration shows her no-nonsense approach and that she intends to run a tight ship.

Brazil’s democracy is still in its adolescence and not without its share of growing pains. But the country is showing it has the resolve to accept important responsibilities. President Lula, Rousseff’s charismatic and globetrotting predecessor, implemented the Bolsa Familia social program in 2003, and since then 40 million Brazilians have climbed out of poverty and into the middle class. Rousseff expanded the program with the goal of continuing to decrease inequality and completely eradicate the extreme poverty that 16 million Brazilians still live in.

As a mark of the progress that Brazil is experiencing, Rio de Janeiro will host both the World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics in 2016, two huge tests of infrastructure, security and national identity.

I was in Rio when Rousseff was elected and the celebration was nothing close to what I felt in Grant Park when Obama became the first black president. The energy in Chicago that night was overwhelming and electrifying; I think I was more excited about Rousseff than most of the Brazilians were (wearing the jersey of your favorite futebol team is a more serious political statement there).

I think the subdued enthusiasm was, in part, because of a natural distrust the Brazilians have in their government, which for many years has been corrupt and incompetent. But Rousseff has shown that she will stick to her ideals and is in the game for the long haul. Brazilians sense this positivity and people are growing more confident with her vision for the country.

Obama, on the other hand, feels to me like the reverse of this trend: Whereas I was once proud of his ambitious plans for America, he is now likening us to another Saudi Arabia — an oppressive petro-state I don’t believe many Americans would like to imitate.

]]>http://uwire.com/2012/01/31/column-obama-should-take-his-cues-from-brazilian-president-rousseff/feed/0Column: Keystone confusionhttp://uwire.com/2012/01/25/column-keystone-confusion/
http://uwire.com/2012/01/25/column-keystone-confusion/#commentsWed, 25 Jan 2012 19:03:47 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=120034On Wednesday, January 18, in a move fomenting consternation within Republican circles and celebration within environmentalist ones, President Barack Obama announced the rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline. Though there is debate over how many jobs the pipeline’s construction and maintenance would actually create—Keystone builder TransCanada posits that 20,000 jobs will be created while a Cornell study puts it closer to 5,000—an infrastructure project like this in a period of high unemployment would almost certainly help improve the economy. For this reason alone the President’s decision to block Keystone was the wrong one. But more importantly, the movement opposing the pipeline, as noble in its ambitions as it may be, is utterly misguided.

The greatest concern surrounding the pipeline is not the danger of polluting the Ogallala Aquifer, a crucial water source in the American Midwest, as surveying is well underway to find a route that bypasses both the Aquifer and the ecologically sensitive Sand Hills region altogether. No, the issue bothering environmentalists about the Keystone XL pipeline is the fact that it is associated with the development of the Alberta oil sands, a move that has been hyperbolically categorized as “Game Over” for the planet by one particularly vocal opponent. When protesters swarmed the White House last year, their logic was simple: end the pipeline, stop oil sands development. But this logic is severely flawed.

The Canadian government and the Canadian energy industry have made clear that development of the oil sands will continue regardless of the ultimate fate of the pipeline. Development is underway, permits have been issued, and a political party eager to promote Canada’s energy resources has recently strengthened its majority in Parliament. The United States is far from the only consumer interested in oil from the Alberta oil sands; growing demand in parts of Asia means that there is no shortage of potential Canadian business partners.

Plans are already being made to transport the oil sands by other means if Keystone falls through, including proposals to transfer the oil to the US by rail or to China by sea. Rail environmental regulations are far more lax than those associated with pipelines, and China’s environmental record is unimpressive to say the least. Environmental protesters opposing the Keystone pipeline fail to understand that stopping it does not change Canada’s economic and political interest in developing the oil sands, and if anything paves the way for more environmentally unsafe means of transporting the oil to prospective buyers.

The moral of the story is this: the controversial development of the Alberta oil sands will continue no matter what, and transportation by pipeline to the United States is far safer and far more likely to create greatly-needed American jobs than any other method. Rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline not only fails to address the potentially legitimate concerns environmentalists have with the development of the oil sands and our continued reliance on fossil fuels, it also throws away thousands of jobs, threatens to derail the United States’ professed goal of energy security, and potentially increases the risk of an oil spill.

]]>http://uwire.com/2012/01/25/column-keystone-confusion/feed/0Column: Obama said no…http://uwire.com/2012/01/25/column-obama-said-no/
http://uwire.com/2012/01/25/column-obama-said-no/#commentsWed, 25 Jan 2012 18:33:31 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=120018The Keystone XL Pipeline was designed to carry oil to the Gulf of Mexico from the Canadian tar sands, a particularly dirty source of crude oil. According to NASA’s top climate scientist James Hansen, the full development of the Pipeline would mean “game over for the climate”. Infuriated by this threat to human security, environmental activists have organized rapidly in the past six months. 1252 activists were arrested in peaceful protest in August and over 10,000 showed up to surround the White House in November. A few weeks later, Obama chose to postpone his decision on KXL until after the Presidential election. House Republicans responded to this by pinning an article on KXL to the payroll tax cut extension bill, effectively forcing a decision on the pipeline within 60 days.

When forced to make the decision, Obama said no to the KXL construction permit.

In some ways, this is a victory. Obama rejected an environmentally destructive proposal after the greatest surge of environmental activism in recent history. Normally fractured environmental groups joined forces to fight for the same goal, and won. The power of people beat out the financial capital of the biggest corporations in the world. This, after all, is why activism matters!

In other ways, however, Obama’s decision is not significant. TransCanada, the corporation proposing the pipeline, will reapply for the construction permit in two weeks with a slightly different route. The State Department will then take a year to complete a new investigation of its environmental effect, and the plan may be approved after that. In other words, Obama’s decision was not final.

Furthermore, as he announced his decision to deny the permit, Obama declared continued support for domestic oil development. What happened to the President who announced in 2008 that he would end “the tyranny of oil”? What happened to the President who pays attention to reality?

According to the International Energy Association, we have five years to seriously slow fossil fuel development, or else all hope of stopping irreversible climate change will be lost. And the IEA is a conservative body, using standards for safe levels of atmospheric CO2 concentration that are often considered too high.

With five years at most to stop climate change, we cannot afford to develop fossil fuels further. Supporters of KXL like to say that it is just one more pipeline and its negative impact on the climate is worth 5000 temporary jobs. Some critics of the anti-KXL movement like pointing out that it would take 1000 years to fully develop the tar sands, arguing that Hansen’s “game over” quote doesn’t apply and KXL isn’t actually that important to climate change.

These arguments all miss the point. We don’t have 1000 years to wait for the tar sands to be completely developed—we have five years until the window of opportunity to combat climate change is “closed forever”, according to Faith Birol, chief economist of the IEA. No pipeline, KXL or otherwise, is “just another pipeline” at this point. Every piece of fossil fuel infrastructure that we build locks us into decades of deadly pollution that we cannot afford.

We have to reverse the trend, stop developing fossil fuels, and power the world using clean, safe energy sources. This vision is not stupid or unrealistic. Engineers at Stanford and UC Davis have found that it would be possible to provide the entire world’s energy needs from clean, safe sources by 2050, keeping energy costs similar to those today. This is not a question of technology or economics—it is a question of political will.

How do we get there? For a start, we can stop wasting $10 billion each year on fossil fuel subsidies. We can pass Representative Pete Stark’s “Save Our Climate Act” to set up a fee and dividend carbon taxing scheme which would protect citizens, encourage development of safe energy sources, and reduce the deficit. American families shouldn’t have to worry about their financial situation being jeopardized by volatile oil prices. American families shouldn’t spend their hard-earned money on energy that causes air pollution, damaging their health and increasing our nation’s healthcare costs. We want our money going to clean energy programs that create sustainable jobs for Americans and strengthen our communities.

Clean energy development and investments in energy efficiency would create hundreds of thousands of jobs and save us billions of dollars. Continued investments in fossil fuel infrastructure such as Keystone XL will cost us billions of dollars and destroy lives.

Do you really want to live in a country where corporate fossil fuel dictators steal your health, corrupt your democracy, and destroy your communities and safety for their profits? I don’t. Join me in the movement to win back our country and build a better future.

]]>http://uwire.com/2012/01/25/column-obama-said-no/feed/0Researchers to use zebra dung in biofuel projecthttp://uwire.com/2012/01/25/researchers-to-use-zebra-dung-in-biofuel-project/
http://uwire.com/2012/01/25/researchers-to-use-zebra-dung-in-biofuel-project/#commentsWed, 25 Jan 2012 17:25:45 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=119999Most people wouldn’t want to step in a pile of smelly zebra dung, but researchers at Tulane U. are jumping right into it.

Scientists have found a bacterium called TU-103 in the waste of African zebras, which might be the solution to a cheaper enzyme for biofuel, according to The New York Times.

Tim Sink, an intern at U. Florida’s Bioenergy and Sustainable Technologies Laboratory, said the available enzymes are expensive to use, so finding another microbe is essential to the economic efficiency of a biofuel project.

He said it’s hard to guess whether the new enzyme will be successful because research is conducted on a trial-and-error basis.

Pratap Pullammanappallil, who teaches environmental biotechnology at UF, said animal droppings are commonly used to create another alternative energy source called biogas, a replacement for natural gas.

Jonathan Miot, director of the Santa Fe College Teaching Zoo, said zebras, which are in the same taxonomic family as horses, have especially strong stomachs.

Miot referred to them as a garbage dump, because while most animals have trouble digesting various species of grasses, zebras can eat all of them.

Miot said zebras have excellent digestive systems due to the bacteria in their guts.

When a zebra eats, the bacteria break down cellulose, a substance indigestible to mammals.

The bacteria produce a waste called volatile fatty acid, which the zebra uses as energy.

Zebras’ bacteria just happen to be right for biofuel research.

“They eat, and they poop,” Miot said. “It’s what they do all day anyways.”

But zebras can be dangerous to handle. They have a strong kick, which, he said, is equivalent to the power of a hand grenade explosion.

Scientists won’t need to continue to gather droppings from captive zebras because the enzymes can be reproduced in a laboratory, Pullammanappallil said.

Miot said Tulane’s project has the potential to inpsire new ideas about how to harness animals’ capabilities.

“There is a lot of stuff out there that we have no idea [about],” he said. “Animals are a lot more creative than we think, though it’s not intentional.”

]]>http://uwire.com/2012/01/25/researchers-to-use-zebra-dung-in-biofuel-project/feed/0Column: GOP playing politics with Obama and Keystone pipelinehttp://uwire.com/2012/01/24/column-gop-playing-politics-with-obama-and-keystone-pipeline/
http://uwire.com/2012/01/24/column-gop-playing-politics-with-obama-and-keystone-pipeline/#commentsTue, 24 Jan 2012 17:22:52 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=119801Debate over a proposed pipeline extension came to an abrupt halt last week after President Barack Obama rejected TransCanada’s application until a final environmental impact statement is completed.

The president’s decision has been cast as controversial, but it was actually a reasonable response in the face of unnecessary pressure by the GOP.

The Keystone XL extension would expand the existing Keystone network and carry tar-like bitumen from Canadian oil sands to the Gulf Coast, where it would be refined and exported.

The pipeline was first proposed in 2008 but has been delayed several times, most recently in November of last year when TransCanada agreed with the governor of Nebraska to move the proposed path around the environmentally sensitive Sand Hills region.

The new route would avoid the Ogallala Aquifer, one of the largest sources of fresh water in the world. The aquifer spans much of the Midwest, provides drinking water for millions of residents and a third of the total water used for irrigation in the United States.

An environmental investigation into the new route was ordered, and any decision on the pipeline application was delayed until the investigation’s conclusion in 2013.

In a blatantly political move, however, Senate Republicans enacted legislation forcing President Obama to either grant or reject the permit in the next 60 days. Faced with only two options, the president erred on the side of caution and rejected the proposal due to the pending environmental investigation.

The decision has allowed Republicans to call the president out on lack of support for infrastructure development and job creation. Republican politicians and pundits have claimed the project could provide anywhere from 20,000 to 250,000 jobs.

These job claims are intentionally misleading and come from a report by the Perryman Group, commissioned by TransCanada itself.

An independent analysis by Cornell University’s Global Labor Institute estimated the number of jobs to be much lower — between 2,500 and 4,650 construction jobs over two years. These numbers are probably too low due to a lack of focus on refinery jobs, but they are more realistic than TransCanada’s most recent numbers.

Both sides of the debate are ascribing too much importance to the president’s decision. The president only rejected the project due to a Republican ultimatum, and he has since urged TransCanada to reapply for its permit, pending the results of the environmental investigation.

While the proposed changes should provide the Ogallala Aquifer better protection from potential spills, environmentalists opposed to the project should not find the president’s decision encouraging.

TransCanada will most likely receive its permit in 2013, regardless of who is in the White House at the time.

Many conservative critics blame the president’s decision on his upcoming reelection campaign. While Obama is certainly in no hurry to grant the permit, since approving the project could alienate his environmentalist constituents, delaying the project until the new route is properly investigated is a perfectly rational decision.

Concerns about possible pipeline leaks are not unfounded, though. The existing Keystone pipeline leaked 12 times last year, and while the majority of these leaks were minor, 21,000 gallons of oil were spilled in a single leak in North Dakota.

In June 2010, a similar pipeline ruptured, spilling more than 1 million gallons of oil into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River. Miles of the river are still closed, and the cleanup cost has totaled $585 million. Costs are projected to rise by at least another 20 percent before the cleanup is completed.

Tar sands pose special challenges compared to conventional oil due to their high concentration of grit and chemical impurities as well as their molasses-like consistency. These properties make oil from tar sands more dangerous to transport and contribute massively to greenhouse gas emission during extraction and refinement.

The president made the right call to protect the American public. Projects like Keystone should only be approved after every potential consequence has been addressed.

In a statement Wednesday afternoon, President Barack Obama announced he was rejecting the project’s permit following the advice of the U.S. State Department. The decision leaves open the possibility of a similar project or another proposal altogether.

Accordingly, TransCanada, the pipeline’s developer, said it won’t give up and plans to reapply for a similar permit that could allow a quicker review process.

There was simply not enough time, Obama said, to evaluate the pipeline’s adjusted route after TransCanada agreed to move the project out of Nebraska’s ecologically sensitive and groundwater-rich Sand Hills region that spans much of the state.

Obama and the State Department had been under deadline from Congress, where Republicans had attached a Feb. 21 due date for the decision to the payroll tax cut passed in December. The administration wanted to extend the process to 2013 and had long said the rush likely would kill the project.

“As the State Department made clear last month,” the president said, “the rushed and arbitrary deadline insisted on by Congressional Republicans prevented a full assessment of the pipeline’s impact, especially the health and safety of the American people, as well as our environment.”

The proposed pipeline, which would have connected oil sands in Alberta, Canada, to refineries in the Gulf of Mexico, had been under federal review since 2008 because the plan crosses an international border.

Supporters said it would generate thousands of temporary jobs and provide a stable source of oil, while opponents said the potential for environmental damage, particularly in Nebraska’s Sandhills overlying the Ogallala Aquifer, was simply too high. The process of extracting oil sands also does more environmental damage than other oil mining techniques.

Both sides quickly seized on the announcement. The oil industry and Congressional Republicans, including those competing to be the Republican presidential candidate, blasted the decision as foolish, wrongheaded, and an attack on jobs that will push the oil to China instead, according to news reports. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich called it “stunningly stupid.”

“I’m deeply disappointed in President Obama’s decision today,” said Nebraska Sen. Mike Johanns in a statement. “The president missed a real opportunity to put people back to work and bring a reliable oil supply to the U.S.”

Meanwhile, environmental and Nebraskan groups hailed the decision as a victory against big oil.

“I think it’s amazing,” said Jane Kleeb, executive director of the political group Bold Nebraska, in a phone interview. The group has rallied opposition to the pipeline in the state for several months. “Nebraskans can stand really proud today.”

Obama’s decision cuts through a political dilemma the Republican deadline forced him to face: Two groups of Democrat supporters, labor and environmentalists, are on opposing sides of the project, and a decision either way would make someone unhappy.

“I’m assuming they’re trying to have it both ways,” said John Hibbing, a professor of political science at U. Nebraska-Lincoln. By leaving open the possibility for another pipeline, he said, Obama might avoid pushing away labor in an election year. “That’s probably a wise move politically.”

The move might complicate the administration’s relationship with Canada, which is the largest oil supplier to the U.S. The Canadian government strongly supported the pipeline and has warned that its denial might persuade them to look to China as a customer for the tar sand oil the pipeline would have carried.

“I’m sure it gives Hillary Clinton and the State Department a lot of work to do,” Hibbing said. The country’s tie to Canada is strong, he added, but “it’s also the sort of thing that needs attention before it can be repaired.”

Nonetheless, TransCanada said in a statement that it would continue working the Nebraska’s government to find a new route through the state, a process that could wrap up in the fall.

“Plans are already underway on a number of fronts to largely maintain the construction schedule of the project,” the company’s CEO, Russ Girling, said in a statement. “TransCanada remains fully committed to the construction of Keystone XL.”

]]>http://uwire.com/2012/01/19/obama-rejects-proposed-transcanada-keystone-xl-pipeline/feed/0Controversial climate researcher speaks onhttp://uwire.com/2012/01/18/controversial-climate-researcher-speaks-on/
http://uwire.com/2012/01/18/controversial-climate-researcher-speaks-on/#commentsWed, 18 Jan 2012 21:08:55 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=119068Michael Mann, a prominent climatologist and former U. Virginia professor, spoke yesterday at U.Va. about the growing evidence of global climate change and the increasing “politicization of science” as part of the annual EnviroDay symposium.

Mann is currently a professor at Pennsylvania State U., and the global climate change research he conducted while at U.Va. from 1999 to 2005 is currently the subject of two lawsuits by Virginia Attorney General and U. Virginia alumnus Ken Cuccinelli and the American Tradition Institute, a conservative think tank.

In his talk, Mann said human-caused warming of the planet has had a discernible impact on the climate, pointing to evidence from modern day models which show global climate change’s relationship with human emissions and carbon footprints.

He added that the average American emits about 20 metric tons of carbon per year, which is the equivalent to two large adult elephants, and said if the rate of man-made carbon emissions continues to accelerate there can easily be a four-to-five degrees Celsius increase in temperature from pre-industrial times. This would be a change significant enough to disrupt global equilibrium.

He also discussed perhaps his most well-known piece of research: the hockey stick graph. “It turns out that modern warming takes us outside of the range of what we think temperatures have been in the past thousand years,” Mann said. “And because of the shape of this curve, you can see there’s sort of this long term decline, which you might think of as a shaft, and then there is the recent warming. You may think of that as the blade.”

Although Mann’s research has attracted nationwide attention and controversy, he said a large amount of research reaches the same conclusion.

Mann also spoke about what he calls the “politicization of science,” or the rising skepticism and involvement of politicians in global climate change research. Because greenhouse gases are at the very core of modern global energy, he said, “there are fairly powerful vested interests who profit greatly from our current reliance on fossil fuels, and they don’t want to see that much change in the future.”

Issues involving climate change research came to the public’s attention just before the 2009 Copenhagen Summit on reducing carbon emission, Mann said, when emails of climate change scientists emerged and words were taken out of context by politicians and members of the press. In 2005, Mann was subpoenaed to appear before government officials and a lawsuit was later filed in an attempt to obtain emails and other documents of Mann’s, prompting significant nationwide media discussion.

“I should say [U. Virginia] took a very brave stance against this yet again obvious effort to intimidate scientists” who might be doing research that is “disadvantageous to certain [industry] leaders that may or may not be contributing to the campaigns of certain politicians,” he said.

Mann said to help stop global climate change, “we could have a good faith debate about what sort of policies [to pursue]. What we can’t participate in a debate about anymore is the reality of the problem.”

EnviroDay is an annual student research symposium for the environmental sciences and Mann was selected by the event organizing committee as the keynote speaker.

]]>http://uwire.com/2012/01/18/controversial-climate-researcher-speaks-on/feed/0New solar cell could revolutionize industryhttp://uwire.com/2012/01/17/new-solar-cell-could-revolutionize-industry/
http://uwire.com/2012/01/17/new-solar-cell-could-revolutionize-industry/#commentsTue, 17 Jan 2012 18:38:06 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=118920Translucent windows harvesting the sun’s energy more efficiently than our current solar panels, cell phones that charge when exposed to ambient light and lights powered by the sun on a cloudy day may not be figments of scientists’ imagination. In the not too distant future, these things could exist due to research at the NC State U. College of Textiles.

According to Maqbool Hussain, a graduate student working on the new solar technology, there are many ideal renewable energy sources, but solar energy is the best and most viable renewable energy source.

“Only one percent of the light that shines on Earth is enough to power most civilized countries,” Hussain said.

The breakthrough is called a Dye-Sensitized Solar Cell (DSSC). The researchers have developed this dye that bonds to Titanium Dioxide, a semiconductor, according to Ahmed El-Shafei, the professor leading the research. This dye absorbs photons from sunlight, which excite the dye’s electrons, according to El-Shafei. These electrons then transfer to the Titanium Dioxide semiconductor and go through a circuit, which generates a current, Hussain said.

There are a few aspects of the DSSC that make them a viable option for everyone, but one of the most important aspects is the price difference compared to regular solar panels.

“Other solar panels use costly inorganic materials and need very special preparation methods,” Hammad Cheema, another graduate student working on the project, said. “Our Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells are much simpler and cheaper.”

According to El-Shafei, DSSC’s are around 60 to 70 percent cheaper than other solar panels.

Aside from the attractive price difference, another aspect of a DSSC is its ability to absorb photons from ambient light as well as direct sunlight. According to El-Shafei, this means the Dye Sensitized Solar Cell is able to use the sun’s energy while not being in direct contact with the sun’s rays. This also means the DSSC can harvest energy from the sun on a cloudy or rainy day. According to El-Shafei, regular solar panels collect different amounts of energy throughout the day, peaking at noon, whereas the DSSC collects the maximum amount of energy throughout the day, due to its ability to capture ambient light.

The final aspect of the Dye-Sensitized Solar Cell that allows it to trump regular solar panels is the fact that a dilute solution of the dye can be used in the cell, allowing the cell to be transparent, according to Cheema. This means that windows, building facades and touch screens on cell phones have the capacity to harvest solar energy with the DSSC technology, according to El-Shafei.

The research team has already produced a dye that is 14 percent more efficient than the current state of the art dye, but their goal is to increase this to 30 percent by the end of the year. According to El-Shafei, this would be a game changer in the solar energy industry. Companies are already interested in their current DSSC and are working to make a deal, which would bring money to N.C. State.

]]>http://uwire.com/2012/01/17/new-solar-cell-could-revolutionize-industry/feed/0Despite hype, unplugging chargers is only a small part of saving energyhttp://uwire.com/2012/01/17/despite-hype-unplugging-chargers-is-only-a-small-part-of-saving-energy/
http://uwire.com/2012/01/17/despite-hype-unplugging-chargers-is-only-a-small-part-of-saving-energy/#commentsTue, 17 Jan 2012 17:09:19 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=118897Most probably wouldn’t have guessed their cellphone would be next to don the environmentalist hat.

Some cellphone manufacturers and service providers are programming a message to appear when a phone’s battery is charged that reads, “To conserve energy, unplug charger from power source.”

As annoyingly idealistic as this reminder might sound, a lot of folks say the gesture to unplug is worth the bother.

“I think the message is great,” said Emily Cross, a U. Illinois junior. “Nothing is too small when it comes to conserving energy.”

Cross, secretary of the Student Sustainability Committee, practices what she preaches by unplugging the heck out of her apartment. She puts all the electrical devices she can fit on a power strip and simply switches the power strip off when she leaves.

But UI Professor John Abelson of materials science and engineering says there are more worthwhile ways to save energy than by unplugging a charger.

“The truth is that unplugging your chargers isn’t a significant way to save energy,” Abelson said. “From a student’s point of view, the plug on a TV and the plug on a cell phone charger look the same and, therefore, consume the same amount of energy. That’s just not the case.”

Abelson says unplugging a charger saves about 1/2 a watt of electricity daily. He believes David J.C. MacKay, a natural philosophy professor at U. Cambridge, puts that amount in perspective best in his book entitled “Sustainable Energy — Without The Hot Air.”

“All the energy saved in switching off your charger for one day is used up in one second of car-driving,” MacKay states in his book. “Obsessively switching off the phone-charger is like bailing the Titanic with a teaspoon. Do switch it off, but please be aware how tiny a gesture it is.”

MacKay goes on to compare how each day, a TV on standby consumes 10 watts, an active laptop computer consumes 16 watts, and a vacuum cleaner in use consumes 1,600 watts.

Abelson thinks young people have a responsibility to be more proactive when purchasing electronics. He recommends reading the literature that comes with each device or renting a kilowatt meter from the library to test how much energy is being used. He warns that ads for energy-mindful gadgets are often exaggerative.

“I’m not impressed by companies pretending to be more green-conscious than they actually are,” said Abelson, explaining what he believes to be the ulterior motive for companies advertising the art of unplugging. “Companies just want customers to feel better about themselves, but customers shouldn’t feel better about doing something insignificant.”

Suhail Barot, UI graduate student and former chair of the Student Sustainability Committee, has a few tips for students that will conserve more energy and money than unplugging a charger of any sort.

Barot says students should use energy saver light bulbs and weather strip their doors and windows. He has saved $40 a month on his heating bill just by picking up inexpensive trimming materials at Wal-mart that prevent cool air from seeping into his apartment.

He also recommends using a clothes-drying rack rather than a dryer, especially in the summer when clothes dry in just a couple hours outside or near a window.

“And do less driving,” said Barot, explaining how he even rides his bike when snow is on the ground. “Campus has an award-winning transit system, so use it.”

Barot also carries a reusable water bottle, turns his thermostat down to 66 degrees Fahrenheit and keeps his computer on an energy saver preference when it’s in use.

He even unplugs his phone charger because, although it only saves a bit, he believes anything he remembers to do is worth doing.

Nevertheless, even an environmentally aware student like Barot is guilty of wasting energy once in a while.

“I probably should take shorter showers than I do,” he said, sheepishly. “No one’s perfect.”

]]>http://uwire.com/2012/01/17/despite-hype-unplugging-chargers-is-only-a-small-part-of-saving-energy/feed/0Column: More emphasis should be on America’s waste problemhttp://uwire.com/2012/01/17/column-more-emphasis-should-be-on-americas-waste-problem/
http://uwire.com/2012/01/17/column-more-emphasis-should-be-on-americas-waste-problem/#commentsTue, 17 Jan 2012 16:56:39 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=118894Approximately 263 million pounds of food were thrown away in the United States yesterday, despite the fact a majority of it was perfectly good to eat.

Initially, it seems like a grandmother’s proverb – “Clean your plate. Don’t let it go to waste,” – but recent empirical research has shown this rampant wastefulness could be far more damaging than just upsetting your sweet old grandma.

A study from Timothy Jones, an anthropologist from U. Arizona, claims as much as half of all of the food produced in America each year is discarded due to multiple inefficacies throughout the consumer food hierarchy.

This includes flaws in harvesting, preservation, transportation and distribution – as well as the fact leftovers seem to be an increasingly rare commodity of the modern American household.

It’s not a problem that’s completely localized to our country, but the statistics do implicate our society as one of the world’s worst offenders. Accordingly, an independent study conducted for the International Congress concluded North America wastes more than 10 times the amount of food than Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia do each year.

In fact, every year North America wastes what equates to nearly three-fourths of all the food produced in the aforementioned foreign regions, despite having vastly superior technology available.

Resources that were once thought to have been precious, such as food or clean water, are habitually taken for granted by the population – myself included.

I want to be clear, I don’t mean to insinuate if we all work together we can take all of our leftovers and cure world hunger. But, more effective strategies within the food industry could at least help to provide meals for the thousands starving here in America as well as positively impact the economy and environment.

Too often we dismiss the notion of hunger as an epidemic that is only centralized in impoverished nations when, in reality, it’s a crisis that exists throughout the U.S.

I’ve witnessed families rummaging through my apartment’s dumpster on occasion, often waiting until dark to either remain undetected or hide their shame.

It’s both heartbreaking and eye-opening to witness a brother and sister slump down in the seats of their old run-down van as their mother and father pillage through what some wasteful college students threw out, just to eat for the night. When just down the road, grocery stores are disposing of unfathomable amounts of fresh food because of unjustifiable “quality-standards,” sometimes locking their trash facilities to keep those unable to put food on the table for their families from dumpster diving.

America’s food waste is also much more than just a social issue.

More efficient conservation policies within the food industry could help save the nation’s economy billions of dollars each year.

For instance, most grocery vendors and wholesalers will throw out an entire carton of eggs if one is broken, or dispose of an entire container of fruit because one apple lost its ripeness.

Coming up with feasible solutions to problems such as this, and similar issues within harvesting and transportation, could literally generate billions of dollars in revenue.

Our environment has also been suffering because of our society’s abhorrent wastefulness.

The EPA reports in 2010, 33 million tons of food waste were sent to landfills and incinerators, making it the single largest component of municipal solid waste in America.

Despite the possible misconceptions that food sitting in a landfill is some kind of environmentally friendly compost heap, it’s been shown this rotting food releases significant amounts of toxic methane into the atmosphere. Methane is an extremely potent greenhouse gas that has 20 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide.

The positive notion to take away from the countless reports and studies being published on the matter is that unlike carbon dioxide levels, it’s hypothesized by many that global food waste levels can be considerably diminished by simply increasing awareness and pursuing logical conversation efforts.

As one of the leading offenders, the U.S. can set an auspicious trend by not only acknowledging food waste is indeed a prevalent issue globally, but that America will pursue immediate real-world solutions to it.

The responsibility begins with us, however, as the consumer, to continually raise our awareness as well as our ability to recognize just how detrimental our wastefulness can be.

It may be in the kitchen or buried in the closet, but chances are that you probably have one, too. Yesterday’s junk drawer filled with potato chip clips and dead batteries has been replaced by high-tech gadgets and outdated toys that constitute our connected lives.

But as annual technology releases like Apple’s iPhone create tremendous hype, they also create an incredible amount of electronic waste –– something Brennan Zelener saw as an opportunity to truly make a difference in sustainable technology.

“I want to change the world,” said Zelener, a Colorado State U. junior. “In developing countries, these phones are incredible. In a year or two, it’s going to be kind of obsolete by American standards, but in Africa, this is an incredible piece of technology.”

Just last year, Zelener launched his own business venture, Green iPhone, while managing a full course load at CSU. He ultimately fulfills the front-end duties of phone recycling by personally communicating with and paying people to hand over their old iPhones –– in any condition. Then, he goes into the phone to unlock and wipe it, essentially giving the phone new life with no remaining personal information.

“The privacy and security of the people who sell me phones is a top priority for everything,” he said, adding that many businesses pay to have their phones destroyed. “If we could even just provide our erasing service for free, that’s gonna be huge for them.”

After working for several months reselling the wiped phones on websites, such as eBay and Craigslist, Zelener has partnered with a larger phone buyer and refurbishing company that purchases used phones in bulk as businesses upgrade their employees to the latest model.

Ultimately, his service allows for people to get rid of their old iPhones, which often still have years of life remaining, in an easy way. He said average buy-back rates are “around $100,” but are changing weekly based on demand.

“It’s just an easier process,” he said, while explaining the other options people often use, including individual sale online. Green iPhone allows people to easily get their phones somewhere that can use them.

To help the business take off in a market where so many others fail, Zelener has worked closely with the Rocky Mountain Innosphere, a local nonprofit that helps entrepreneurs further specify their goals while critiquing the viability of the new idea.

“It’s exciting, but you never know whether you’re making the right decisions or not when you’re starting,” Zelener said.

To help navigate the business world, the 20-year-old entrepreneur has taken it upon himself to make as many connections in the community as possible, including those in the business world and in the realm of academia.

Yolanda Sarason, associate professor of business management and strategic marketing, first met Zelener in her class during the spring semester, and immediately saw something unique in him.

“It was really obvious from the get-go that he just stood out,” she said. “He’s a natural entrepreneur, and that’s very unusual for our undergraduates.”

Since that time, the two have worked closely and are currently preparing for a pitch on Wednesday to the Social Advisory Group for Entrepreneurs –– a group of business leaders who critique new entrepreneurial pitches to assist in fine-tuning each resource, including funding, while building connections.

“He’s a natural networker,” Sarason said. “He already knows the entrepreneurial community pretty well. If I were betting, I would definitely bet on Brennan.”

Zelener, like many college students, has faced tough times early on in his college career. Initially, he questioned moving away from his home state of Alaska, but after realizing that a lot of what he wanted to do was business-related, he changed his major from engineering.

“It’s really important to get out of your comfort zone,” he said. “I think when you’re passionate enough about something, you end up learning it.”

That passion of his is nothing new.

Andy Holleman is a long-time family friend who has known Zelener since he was born. Holleman has worked as the technology coordinator for Zelener’s high school in Alaska for several years and served as a mentor to him.

He said that, when he wasn’t skiing off of his roof or jumping off other high places, Zelener often created small business ideas that would typically see little success before failing. What made him different was that, when one idea fell through, he always had another plan, Hollman said.

“I would put a lot of it on his own initiative,” he added. “At some point while in high school, he grasped the idea that he really could shape the way things could be.”

As a mentor during high school and through their occasional conversations since, Holleman said one thing that has always stuck out is the drive to never work for anyone else –– to always be steering his own business.

“There’s a switch somewhere that gets flipped, and that life just ceases to be an option,” Holleman said.

Zelener, like everyone else, is looking forward to winter break and a chance to catch up on things that have long been forgotten during the time-crunch of school and his business work. And though he doubts he will be able to hit the ski slopes or bike as much as he wishes, he said that he will be busy preparing for the next step for his business, which he hopes takes off even further next semester.

He added that his favorite part of the business world he has seen so far is the potential to actually make a difference –– something he hopes to do in the form of revolutionizing the way in which the recycling process operates.

“It’s like realizing that the world is a place that you can change,” he said. “It’s not that far out, and it’s not that far fetched. As long as we can teach passion and motivation, those two factors persist through all things.”

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/12/12/recycling-iphones-student-entrepreneur-brennan-zelener-develops-new-outlets-for-old-phones/feed/0Study shows Chesapeake Bay environment, dead zones healinghttp://uwire.com/2011/12/02/study-shows-chesapeake-bay-environment-dead-zones-healing/
http://uwire.com/2011/12/02/study-shows-chesapeake-bay-environment-dead-zones-healing/#commentsFri, 02 Dec 2011 19:27:42 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=102073A recent study has shown that efforts to reduce the flow of fertilizers, animal waste and other pollutants into the Chesapeake Bay appear to be increasing the health of the bay.

Published in the Nov. 2011 issue of Estuaries and Coasts, this examination was conducted by researchers from Johns Hopkins U. and the U. Maryland Center for Environmental Science.

According to Rebecca Murphy, the leading research assistant in the study and a doctoral student in the Johns Hopkins Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering at Hopkins, the team was aiming to develop a database of water quality data in order to analyze the long-term trends of the dead zones, areas of the Bay where plants and animals cannot live. Building off previous research that indicated that the dead zone was not responding to changes in the amounts of nutrients coming into the bay, Murphy and her team created a database to further analyze these prior findings and determine what really is happening.

The team looked at 60 years of data and found that the size of summer oxygen-starved dead zones leveled off in deep channels of the bay during the 1980s and has been declining ever since. In addition, they determined that the duration, or how long the dead zone persists each summer, is closely linked each year to the amount of nutrients entering the bay.

The timing is key because in the 1980s, an intense effort to cut nutrient pollution in the Chesapeake Bay was initiated through the multi-state federal Chesapeake Bay Program. The goal was to restore the water quality and health of the bay.

“I was really excited by these results because they point to improvement in the health of the Chesapeake Bay,” Murphy said. “We now have evidence that cutting back on the nutrient pollutants pouring into the bay can make a difference. I think that’s really significant.”

“When we found that the dead zone is indeed responding to a decrease in nutrient loads, it’s good news because it means the bay is doing what we expect,” Murphy said.

She further explained that if the agriculture industry continues to improve farming practices and decrease the amount of nutrients going into the bay, then the size of the dead zone should become smaller.

Although this has been well known for quite some time, the data did not seem to reflect that. Instead, the data suggested the dead zones were not responding to decreases in nutrient loads at all.

“This study shows that our regional efforts to limit nutrient pollution may be producing results. Continuing nutrient reduction remains critically important for achieving bay restoration goals,” Don Boesch, president of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, said.

The Chesapeake Bay is the nation’s largest estuary, a body of water where fresh and salt water mix. According to the Chesapeake Bay Program, the bay is about 200 miles long, has about roughly 4,480 square miles of surface area and supports more than 3,600 species of plants, fish and other animals.

However, the health of the bay deteriorated during much of the 20th century, contributing to a drop in the Chesapeake’s fish and shellfish populations. Environmental experts blamed this largely on a flow of nutrients entering the bay from sources such as farm fertilizer, animal waste, water treatment discharge, and atmospheric deposition. Heavy spring rains typically flush these chemicals, mostly nitrogen and phosphorus, into the Susquehanna River and other waterways that empty into the Chesapeake. There the nutrients promote a large growth of algae.

When the algae die, their remains sink to the bottom of the bay, where they are consumed by bacteria. As they feast on algae, the bacteria utilize dissolved oxygen in the water. This leads to a condition called hypoxia, or depletion of oxygen.

As this process continues through the spring and summer, the lack of oxygen turns large areas of the Chesapeake into dead zones. Hypoxia sometimes results in fish kills.

“By looking at existing data, we have been able to link decreasing hypoxia to a reduction in the nutrient load in the bay,” study co-author Michael Kemp, an ecologist with the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science’s Horn Point Laboratory, said. “The overall extent and duration of mid-to-late summer hypoxia are decreasing.”

The steady decrease in dead zones coincides with the launch of state and federal efforts to reduce the flow of algae-feeding pollutants into the bay.

For instance, farmers were encouraged to plant natural barriers and to take other steps to keep fertilizer out of waterways that feed the Chesapeake. Also, water treatment plants began to pull more pollutants from their discharge, and air pollution control measures curbed the movement of nitrogen from the atmosphere into the bay.

Despite these efforts, Murphy explains that the greatest reduction of pollutants in the bay have been a result of voluntary agreements between the states and the ETA, which consists of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, New York, Washington D.C. and a small part of Delaware and West Virginia.

All of the states agreed to decrease pollutants by certain percentages each year. Recently, the ETA has put into works an act called the Total Maximum Daily Load, which sets limits of nitrogen and phosphorus coming into the bay. Although not yet officially established, once passed it will be a federal law to control pollutants in hopes of further improving the reduction of dead zones.

According to Murphy, new efforts like this need to continue to be established.

“What we’ve seen is a really slight improvement. There needs to be much more reduction of nutrients coming into the bay and a decrease in the amount of sediment,” he said.

With more work, Murphy firmly believes there will be more improvement.

The study also examined a trend that shows an early summer spike in dead zones. This observation has troubled many bay watchers because they feared that keeping more nutrients out of the bay was not improving its health. However, the new study found that the early summer jump in dead zones was influenced by climate forces, not by the runoff of pollutants.

Dead zone formation occurs in a phenomenon called stratification. This is when fresh water from the rivers entering the bay forms a layer on top of the more dense salt water, which comes from the ocean.

The two layers don’t easily mix, so when air near the surface adds oxygen to the top layer, it doesn’t reach the deeper salt water. Without oxygen at these lower depths, marine animals cannot live, and a dead zone is formed.

“Rebecca discovered that the increase in these early summer dead zones is because of changes in climate forces like wind, sea levels and the salinity of the water. It was not because the efforts to keep pollutants out of the bay were ineffective,” William P. Ball, a professor of environmental engineering at Hopkins, said.

Ball, a co-author of the new study, is Murphy’s doctoral adviser.

“We believe that without those efforts to rein in the pollutants, the dead zone conditions in June and early July would have been even worse,” Ball said.

The study was supported by funding from the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Commerce, NOAA. The research was conducted as part of a larger five-year Chesapeake Bay Environmental Observatory project, funded through the Chesapeake Research Consortium, which involves seven institutions.

Global food demand could double by 2050, according to a new projection released by U. Minnesota researchers Monday.

This could severely increase the amount of environmental pollutants and threaten extinction for many species, according to the findings of David Tilman, regents professor of Ecology in the College of Biological Sciences, and his colleagues.

According to United Nations demographers, the world’s population could reach 9.3 billion by 2050. The world’s total population is already at or nearing 7 billion, based on varying reports from the U.N. and the U.S. Census Bureau.

As poorer nations increase their populations’ annual incomes in future decades, there will be a large increase in demand for animal products like meat and dairy, said Jason Hill, an assistant professor in the University’s College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences, As a result, demand for grain crops to feed livestock will also increase, he said.

Tilman and Hill, along with another University researcher Belinda Befortand, and Christian Blazer — a University of California, Santa Barbara professor — co-authored an article that summarized their findings and the potential risks of current international agricultural practices.

“It’s long been known that there’s more that we can do to ensure that there’s a sustainable food supply for the future,” Hill said. “But in this paper we put some hard numbers behind the claims.”

Thirty-five percent of all greenhouse gas emissions come from agricultural processes, compared with 20 percent from automobile emissions, Tilman said. But the effects could be decreased by improving agricultural practices in poorer countries, he said.

For example, in nations like the United States, farmers control fertilizer use based on the specific needs of different areas of land. This could easily be adopted by farmers with smaller areas of land in poor countries, Tilman said.

According to the article, agricultural techniques in richer nations can increase crop yield and reduce the amount of pollution emitted. Crop yields for the wealthiest nations were more than 300 percent higher than yields for the poorest nations in 2005, the article said.

Traditionally, farmers in developing countries would simply clear more land when attempting to grow more food. But that technique does nothing to increase crop yield, Tilman said. The technique also accounts for a large portion of agricultural greenhouse gas emissions and threatens certain species of animals with extinction, Tilman said.

But he said industrialized agriculture techniques require a large amount of farmer education and often come with larger costs up front.

If current agricultural techniques continue, the article stated, critical levels of nitrogen and carbon could be released into the environment and excessive use of fertilizer could contaminate groundwater.

If current levels of land clearing continue, more than 2.5 billion acres of land would be cleared by 2050, an area the size of the United States. But if new processes are adapted, that amount could be reduced to half a billion acres, Tilman said.

“It’s not an emergency, but it’s not something we can wait until 2050 to start doing,” Tilman said. “By that time, we will have the environmental damage done, and we’ll have lots of people with very substandard diets around the world.”

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/11/22/world-population-growth-could-spur-food-shortage/feed/0Algae poisons Gulf of Mexicohttp://uwire.com/2011/11/17/algae-poisons-gulf-of-mexico/
http://uwire.com/2011/11/17/algae-poisons-gulf-of-mexico/#commentsThu, 17 Nov 2011 12:33:20 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=82857Intensified by historic drought conditions, the Gulf of Mexico has been subjected to the invasive and life-threatening algal bloom known as red tide, which has killed 4.2 million fish since September.

Red tide is a brownish-red algae, known as phytoplankton or Karenia brevis, that produces a neurotoxin called brevetoxin — a compound that disrupts normal neurological processes. During drought conditions, the Gulf of Mexico is more susceptible to red tide because the algae favors warm, salty water.

As fish swim through the red tide, they ingest red tide cells, which attack their nervous system and paralyze the fish, causing them to suffocate. In oysters, the neurotoxin becomes a heat-stable compound that cannot be cleared by cooking the oyster. The Texas Department of State Health Services shut down oyster season, which was supposed to begin Nov. 1, in the Gulf of Mexico due to red tide.

Meridith Byrd, marine biologist for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, said that although it’s not safe to eat the oysters due to the neurotoxin, it is safe to eat fish, crab and shrimp.

“The reason why it’s safe to eat fish, crab and shrimp is because the neurotoxin affects the organs and not the meat,” Byrd said. “Since the cancellation of the oyster season in the Gulf of Mexico, it has affected the oystermen that rely on oysters as a source of income to feed their families. Businesses that rely on oysters that come from the Gulf of Mexico have to go to other states to obtain their oysters.”

Lisa Campbell, professor in the Texas A&M U. Department of Oceanography, said that red tides have occurred historically in the Gulf of Mexico and are a part of the natural cycle.

“To explain when and why red tide occurs, we have a number of active research projects that involve monitoring bloom abundance and developing predictive models,” Campbell said. “My research is funded by the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and the Texas Sea Grant Program, which support training of graduate students in research on red tide.”

Byrd said that red tide can be harmful and fatal for pets and encourages people not to bring their pets to the beach.

“Since dogs have smaller bodies compared to humans, fighting off the neurotoxin would be much more difficult for a dog,” Byrd said. “Dogs can easily ingest the neurotoxin by licking their fur and grooming themselves. There have been documented dog and coyote deaths due to the red tide in the past.”

Campbell said the Gulf of Mexico obtains the red tide once every few years and the last red tide that occurred was in 2009.

“Although the current continuing algal bloom is not the most damaging to have occurred, the bloom is nonetheless affecting large areas of the Texas coast,” Campbell said.

The Texas Sea Grant’s mission is to develop a better understanding of Texas’ coastal resources through research, outreach and educational programs in support of sustainable use and conservation of resources for the benefit of the economy and environment. Jim Hiney, communications coordinator for the Texas Sea Grant College Program, said the grant provides about $800,000 annually in competitive research grants to scientists at a number of the state’s accredited universities.

The Imaging Flow Cytobot is a funded project from the Texas Sea Grant, developed by Campbell, which combines video and flow cytometric technology to capture high-resolution images. This instrument will be able to develop predictive indices for early warnings of harmful algal bloom events that occur in the Gulf of Mexico.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/11/17/algae-poisons-gulf-of-mexico/feed/0Column: Pipeline decision means oil industry will move overseashttp://uwire.com/2011/11/15/column-pipeline-decision-means-oil-industry-will-move-overseas/
http://uwire.com/2011/11/15/column-pipeline-decision-means-oil-industry-will-move-overseas/#commentsTue, 15 Nov 2011 17:15:39 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=81084When most students hear the word Keystone, they immediately think about what they were drinking last weekend. They don’t think about the Keystone XL pipeline.

This pipeline is a $7 billion project from TransCanada Corp. that would transport an estimated 830,000 barrels of crude oil from Alberta, Canada, to Houston every day. The pipeline could produce as many as 20,000 jobs, many of them in the Houston area. Last week, the Obama administration killed the hopes of this pipeline being built by delaying the rest of its construction until 2013.

TransCanada Corp. has already poured $2 billion into the project, but has repeatedly come under fire because part of the pipeline will cross the Sandhills region of Nebraska, an ecologically fragile area that lies above the Ogallala Aquifer. About 27 percent of the irrigated land in the US relies on this aquifer for agricultural needs.

The fear that this pipeline could pollute this aquifer is understandable, but with the amount of research TransCanada Corp. has put into the project, it is highly unlikely that this will happen.

On Monday, the company announced that it would examine alternative routes for the contested portion of the pipeline — routes that would allow them to bypass the Ogallala Aquifer.

You would think this would be enough for opponents of the project, but it seems they are more concerned about killing US jobs and ridding the US of a viable source of oil than protecting the aquifer.

“It’s our hope that (the delay) will kill the pipeline,” said Nick Berning, a spokesman for Friends of the Earth, a grassroots environmental group, to the International Business Times. “It’s simply not true that we need this oil.”

This couldn’t be further from the truth. We do, in fact, need this oil. In addition to doubling the amount of oil sand refined in the US, the pipeline could potentially lower oil prices and give the US a necessary alternative to oil produced in the Middle East.

Furthermore, what is the message the Obama administration is sending to oil companies? The application for the project was submitted to the U.S. Department of State in September of 2008. Why now, after three years have passed, is the US government making the decision to halt construction of the project?

It is possible that this is simply a political move by President Barack Obama. By delaying the construction of the project until after 2013, Obama has prevented the pipeline from becoming an election issue. It will enable him to enter the 2012 election with a stable voter base.

The Obama administration is sending the message to oil companies that the US is not a good country in which to do business. Most oil companies are already moving their operations overseas. This pipeline could have been a symbol of our nation’s commitment to the oil industry — an industry that employs and provides benefits to thousands of US citizens.

Canada’s Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, is already considering focusing his nation’s oil resources in another direction — West. Harper talked to reporters on Sunday at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leader’s meeting in Hawaii about how the decision to delay construction of the pipeline will affect the future of Canada’s oil industry.

“This does underscore the necessity of Canada making sure that we are able to access Asia markets for our energy products,” Harper said.

Alberta Premier Alison Redford echoed Harper’s sentiments in the National Post on Monday.

“Reality is, Alberta and Canada will build markets, and we will go where there are markets available to us,” Redford said.

The Obama administration needs to be held accountable for its reckless decision to delay the construction of this project.

Hopefully, TransCanada Corp. will be able to finish the project. But if not, we will know where to place the blame.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/11/15/column-pipeline-decision-means-oil-industry-will-move-overseas/feed/0Column: Obama made right decision to Shut down the Keystone XL pipelinehttp://uwire.com/2011/11/14/column-obama-made-right-decision-to-shut-down-the-keystone-xl-pipeline/
http://uwire.com/2011/11/14/column-obama-made-right-decision-to-shut-down-the-keystone-xl-pipeline/#commentsMon, 14 Nov 2011 15:30:15 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=79589TransCanada, one of the largest energy companies in North America, is seeking to build a pipeline –– known as Keystone XL –– that would transport synthetic crude oil and diluted bitumen from the Athabasca Oil Sands in northeastern Alberta, Canada, to refineries in Illinois and Oklahoma, and then eventually as far south as the Gulf Coast region.

In 2006, it was estimated that there are 170 billion barrels of viable, recoverable oil at Athabasca, making the area’s reserves second only to Saudi Arabia’s.

Since the pipeline crosses international and state borders, President Obama must first grant TransCanada a permit before the company can move forward with construction.

Last week, the administration announced that it would delay granting approval for the construction of the controversial pipeline until at least 2013.

Critics of the administration have accused the president of pandering to his liberal base while killing thousands of jobs in the process.

“The current project has already been deemed environmentally sound, and calling for a new route is nothing but a thinly veiled attempt to avoid upsetting the president’s political base before the election,” said House Speaker John Boehner in a statement.

That’s because pollution from tar sands oil greatly eclipses that of conventional oil. During tar sands oil production alone, levels of carbon dioxide emissions are three times higher than those of conventional oil, due to more energy-intensive extraction and refining processes.

The result is higher emissions of toxic sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxide, emissions known to cause smog and acid rain and contribute to respiratory diseases like asthma.
The proposed pipeline would carry 900,000 barrels of tar sands oil into the United States daily, generating emissions equal to adding more than six million new cars to U.S. roads.

It’s not just emissions from producing and subsequently burning the oil, either.

Extracting this oil involves strip-mining on a massive scale, then processing the sands to extract the bitumen they contain. Vast amounts of water are needed to separate the bitumen from sand, silt and clay. If production reaches the proposed 900,000 barrels a day, these operations would use roughly 400 million gallons of water a day.

Ninety percent of this polluted water is then dumped into large human-made pools, known as tailing ponds. These ponds are home to toxic sludge, and are full of substances like cyanide and ammonia –– which ends up in neighboring clean water supplies.

The area in Western Canada where the tar sands are extracted from is also home to thousands of indigenous people. Communities living downstream from these tailing ponds have seen spikes in rates of rare cancers, renal failure, lupus and hyperthyroidism.

“My people are dying, and anyone involved in the tar sands industry must take responsibility for that,” said George Poitras in an interview with Scottish newspaper, The Herald.

More than 100 people in Poitras’ small lakeside village of Fort Chipewyan have died from cancer –– out of a First Nation population of about 1,200.

Poitras blames the high rates of cancer among his people on toxic pollutants from massive mining operations 150 miles upstream.
“The industry is not just dirty oil, it is bloody oil,” said the 46-year-old former chief of the Mikisew Cree First Nation tribe.

These problems will only get worse with the construction of the
new pipeline and ramped-up production. Unfortunately, an area the size of Florida is already set for extraction. These operations have left vast ponds of contaminated waste, which can be seen from outer space, leading critics to call the project, “the most destructive project on Earth.”

In the summer 2010, a million gallons of tar sands oil poured into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan from a pipeline run by another Canadian company, Enbridge. The spill exposed residents to toxic chemicals, coated wildlife and has caused long-term damage to the local economy and ecosystem.

Furthermore, TransCanada’s Keystone I pipeline has already spilled a dozen times in less than a year of operation, prompting a corrective action order from the Department of Transportation.

The Keystone XL pipeline would cross six U.S. states and cross major rivers, including the Missouri River, Yellowstone and Red Rivers, as well as key sources of drinking and agricultural water, such as the Ogallala Aquifer, which supplies water to more than two million Americans.

So while Obama’s timing may seem suspicious, there are many reasons other than simple political posturing for his decision to delay the project.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/11/14/column-obama-made-right-decision-to-shut-down-the-keystone-xl-pipeline/feed/0Research shows fracking may not contaminate groundhttp://uwire.com/2011/11/10/research-shows-fracking-may-not-contaminate-ground/
http://uwire.com/2011/11/10/research-shows-fracking-may-not-contaminate-ground/#commentsThu, 10 Nov 2011 18:15:44 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=75152There is no direct link between fracking and contamination of groundwater, according to preliminary results of a study by U. Texas’ Energy Institute.

Hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking, involves shooting high-pressure water mixed with sand and other chemicals into shale rock causing it to shatter and release natural gas. Though fracking has been used for decades, environmentalists have recently become concerned the process may be polluting ground water, said Charles Groat, geology professor and Energy Institute associate director and project leader.

Research began in May to separate fact from fiction, Groat said. He said the Barnett, Marcellus and Haynesville shales, areas which range from Northeast Texas to the Northeast U.S., have been scientifically tested.

“The basic thing we found out was that the subject so many are concerned about is not actually happening,” Groat said.

Reports of groundwater contamination are rare, Groat said, and when they occur, fracking is not to blame. Rather, above-ground leaks, the mishandling of waste water and poor casing or cement jobs could be causing the contamination.

“If you spill something or something leaks, those are things you have to pay attention to,” Groat said. “Those are problems with anything, though, and not specific to shale fracking.”

This study covers a six-month period and Groat said much more research is needed to find the long-term, cumulative effects and risks of fracking. His study will continue for the remainder of 2011, but he said he recommends an additional baseline study be implemented to learn more about long-term effects.

“Things go on in and around the surface that we need to pay attention to,” Groat said. “Accidents happen, but being educated can prevent them.”

For the remainder of the study, Groat and his team will interview residents of fracking areas, review popular media concerns of fracking and make suggestions on government regulations of the method.

Electrical engineering freshman Shawn Bhalla said he will feel more comfortable about fracking when more research is done.

“I still think there needs to be more safety precautions set in place,” Bhalla said. “I think we will be able to frack with more efficiency [after more research is done.]”

Electrical engineering junior Leonardo Gomide said this study proves how much scientists still need to learn.

“This really shows how little we know about what we are doing to the environment and how quickly things change in the engineering field,” Gomide said.

In an attempt to explore ways to stabilize rising global temperatures, a team of researchers including Harvard U. Applied Physics Professor David Keith has developed a plan to quantify and model the effects of solar radiation management (SRM)—techniques to reflect sunlight back into space.

Keith and his colleagues provide a framework for analyzing the potential benefits of exploring SRM techniques more deeply, concluding that further testing of SRM would be beneficial.

“Our goal was to examine the all-or-nothing assumption common in studies of SRM, by using climate models to find out if a limited test of SRM could be detected in the face of natural climate variability,” Keith said in a SEAS press release.

“Our results suggest that it should be possible to turn SRM on slowly—looking carefully for unexpected side-effects—before committing to full-scale use.”

Though SRM may help combat rising global temperatures, environmentalists worry that such protocols would deter nations from enacting stricter emissions policies.

“There is a taboo when it comes to talking about this because there is an underlying feeling that even talking about technical fixes like this will encourage people not to cut emissions,” Keith said.

Nonetheless, Keith said inaction is more harmful to the environment than the effects of solar radiation management.

According to an opinion article Keith published in the January 2010 issue of Nature, solar radiation management could offset rising temperatures 100 times more cheaply than emission cuts.

Though the project is very economical, Keith said that it may still be a risky proposition.

“This is not a cost-benefit trade-off,” Keith said. “It’s a risk-risk trade-off, so doing this stuff has some risks, including some very serious global risks, but it has some potential large benefits.”

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/11/10/planet-hacking-project-aims-for-new-climate-model/feed/0Column: Don’t blame U.S. for Amazon deforestationhttp://uwire.com/2011/11/09/column-don%e2%80%99t-blame-u-s-for-amazon-deforestation/
http://uwire.com/2011/11/09/column-don%e2%80%99t-blame-u-s-for-amazon-deforestation/#commentsWed, 09 Nov 2011 15:40:58 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=73713The amount of biodiversity on this planet is truly awe-inspiring. Scientists nearly unanimously agree that deforestation directly leads to global climate change. Furthermore, scientists lament loss of biodiversity, particularly with respect to still undiscovered and undocumented species. Some believe these unidentified species could hold the key to curing diseases or provide a blueprint for further scientific innovation based off of Mother Nature’s diverse creations.

People from around the world who are conscientious of the destruction of this important ecosystem commonly cite the Amazon rainforest as the largest and most well-known example of this manmade calamity. Other rainforests also face similar – albeit less publicized – challenges throughout Indonesia and Southeast Asia.

Focusing on the Amazon rainforest specifically, for decades now, it has been the modus operandai to blame the “evil” foreign investors and multinationals who recklessly steal the national resources of this fertile region. The word “imperialist” is a one-size-fits-all method of passing the buck to others far away.

But concerned citizens need to take a closer look at the real forces leading to the continued deforestation of the Amazon rainforest. For far too long, the blame for deforestation has been placed on international corporations, as well as other powerful multinational entities such as the International Monetary Fund or the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation.

In the case of Brazil, the pro-nationalist, avidly anti-imperialist Workers’ Party has been in power for nearly 10 years. Since assuming control of the country, the party has made several key changes. Most notable has been the systematic and methodical alienation of the IMF and other multinationals operating inside Brazil; in other words, Brazil has become increasingly protectionist economically.

One ambitious goal set by the party was the creation of more jobs for Brazilians. As a result, the first decade of the 21st century will be remembered in Brazil as a decade of tremendous growth, with extensive construction projects and infrastructure development.

Scientists have confirmed that deforestation increases greenhouse gases much more than fossil fuel emissions do. By far the largest cause of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest is land clearing for cattle and livestock; for the past decade, it was estimated that close to 70 percent of all deforestation in the Amazon was for the purpose of cattle ranching. Surprisingly, the often-vilified practice of logging, long associated with imperialists, was deemed to be the cause of a mere 2-3 percent of all Amazonian deforestation. Add into the equation the fact that Brazilians consume more beef per capita than nearly any other nation worldwide, and a much clearer picture emerges, further clarifying what really is the driving force behind the continued deforestation of the Amazon.

The biggest irony of them all concerning deforestation in the Amazon has yet to be spelled out. As mentioned earlier, the term “imperialist” has an extremely negative connotation. Throughout history, imperialists are best remembered for arriving from distant foreign lands, claiming territory that was not their own, enforcing their preferred sets of rules on local inhabitants, and implementing de facto ownership. Funny enough, in the case of Brazil as well as several neighboring nations, the government honors and safeguards the imperialist practice of squatting.

This essentially means people come from somewhere else, arrive on a location, set up shop, claim it as their own, implement their own lifestyle and way of life and, after a certain period of time, expect legal recognition as the rightful owners of that piece of land. In the case of Brazil, anyone looking to start life anew simply abandons the city, leaves for the edge of the rainforest and squats. Ownership is legal after exactly one year and one day of inhabiting the land, and this land can be resold after five years of ownership.

In a region that notoriously prides itself on fervent nationalism and staunch anti-imperialism, it is ironic to see the Amazon rainforest being ravaged not by foreign imperialists, but rather by millions of native mini-imperialists, all of whom are taking advantage of the legal system for what they hope will be a better life. The only loser at the end of the day is their own national treasure, pillaged and soon to be exhausted by its own people.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/11/09/column-don%e2%80%99t-blame-u-s-for-amazon-deforestation/feed/0Robert Kennedy discusses environmental policy, alternative energy sourceshttp://uwire.com/2011/11/03/robert-kennedy-discusses-environmental-policy-alternative-energy-sources/
http://uwire.com/2011/11/03/robert-kennedy-discusses-environmental-policy-alternative-energy-sources/#commentsThu, 03 Nov 2011 18:32:38 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=66963Robert Kennedy Jr. had some big shoes to fill in terms of pursuing progressive causes, and he has carried the torch proudly. Kennedy has spent the past 20 years fighting for environmental causes. On Wednesday at 7 p.m., he spoke at U. Illinois on the topic of environmental policy and alternative energy sources. His main points were the inefficiencies of current energy sources as well as the failures of public policy.

“Using an internal combustion engine is like carrying around a 500-pound power plant,” he said. “It is incredibly inefficient.”

Kennedy said that many of the technologies we use today are wasteful, and there is a lot misinformation going around.

“There are these scientists that go on Fox News and tell everybody that global warming isn’t real,” he said. “It is like the Flat Earth Society.”

He said that the biggest falsehood is that the industry and the economy will suffer if we protect the environment.

“Good environmental policy is identical to good economic policy,” he said.

Investment in the green industry will spur job growth.

“That is where the jobs are,” Kennedy said. “That is where the economy is going to grow.”

An example he used was Brazil, whose economy has improved drastically since it decarbonized transportation. Kennedy said it is still continuing to grow economically, and it is now the fifth strongest economy in the world.

Kennedy also stressed the importance of protecting nature and the environment. He said the public benefits from the maintenance of nature both in the present and in the future. If a coal plant does not dump pollutants into a river, not only is the river clean today but humans will not be affected by health problems due to harmful mercury levels exposed to fish.

A central theme to Kennedy’s talk was his belief that special interests and corporations have continuously used their money to buy influence with public officials.

“I like corporations, but I don’t like them controlling our government,” he said.

Kennedy’s talk, delivered with strong emotions, received different opinions.

“I agree with him that if anything pushes alternative energies forward, it will be market forces,” said Phil Mekeel, UI senior.

Jessica Gao, UI sophomore, said she didn’t agree with all of his ideas but respected his dedication.

“He was very liberal in his views, but he did present some unique ideas for alternative energy,” Gao said. “He has stuck to what he believes for two and a half decades, and that is very admirable.”

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/11/03/robert-kennedy-discusses-environmental-policy-alternative-energy-sources/feed/0Column: Energy leaders should dare to think differentlyhttp://uwire.com/2011/11/02/column-energy-leaders-should-dare-to-think-differently/
http://uwire.com/2011/11/02/column-energy-leaders-should-dare-to-think-differently/#commentsWed, 02 Nov 2011 15:25:44 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=65466Drill baby drill. That’s my response to the question, “What will be the future of energy?” Considering my field of research this response may be perplexing, but it’s really all in the way you pose the question.

The immediate future in energy will be much of the same. And why shouldn’t it be? The United States is the Saudi Arabia of coal and natural gas.

However, if you ask me what the future should be, my response is vastly different. Whether the operative verb phrase is “should be” or “will be,” the issue is really about the question’s time horizon.

Many people love to answer the “will be” question by painting visions of electric cars and high-speed electric trains. In that world, wind and solar provide all your electrical energy needs. Petroleum is used only for jet propulsion — until the mini-nuclear reactors can take care of that, too. Oh, and nuclear fuel is infinitely reusable. No need for waste disposal in Yucca Mountain.

It’s actually a pretty nice future when you start to think about it.

But then reality creeps in and obstacles arise, and our road to the energy future doesn’t look as smooth any more. So we resort back to drill baby drill.

I was born in Odessa, Texas, and am the son of a rough neck. I get drill baby drill. It’s comfortable. It’s known. But unfortunately, as an engineer, I have a nagging conceptual understanding of the fossil fuel cycle. And when we hit peak production, simple economics says that the decrease in supply coupled with unyielding demand will result in a spike in energy prices.

So who is taking care of that energy future? Energy tycoon T. Boone Pickens says the U.S. is the only develoed country without an energy policy. I disagree. The market is our policy.

I love the market. Before I was an engineer, I was an economist. So I find reassurance that the right price signals will emerge from the market and the Jetsons-like future of energy will in fact come to fruition.

What I don’t find comfort in is the divergence of capitalism and nationalism. When the U.S. was the only player in the game, the success of capitalism equaled the success seen domestically. In fluid markets pertaining to energy, that’s not the case anymore.

By no means am I advocating protectionism but I am advocating for advanced thinking and investment. Governmental interference in the market can be very anti-capitalistic but can prove very pro-nationalistic. Just ask China. From currency manipulations to extremely large subsidies, these anti-capitalistic policies have proven very fruitful for the Chinese in many industrial markets. In the energy realm, China went from a non-existent wind turbine component industry to the leader in global production in five years using anti-capitalistic tactics like local content regulations.

I’m not picking on China. I’m praising the country — not for anti-capitalist policies but for pro-nationalistic ones.

In the electricity industry, HPL (now Reliant) and TXU made anti-competitive maneuvers to profit in California and Texas in the advent of electrical deregulation. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is notorious for such measures in the oil industry. The market holds them as responsible as it did Wall Street bankers with large compensation packages during the financial crisis.

Government shouldn’t have to live by a double standard. Policies that are considered “visionary” and “ahead of the curve” by the private sector shouldn’t be scrutinized as “anticompetitive” and “intrusions” by the public sector. Wayne Gretzky was once asked why he was so dominant in his time. He responded that he never tried to get to where the puck was, but rather where it was going to be. Positioning is, in fact, going to be what overcomes the energy obstacles of the future.

Energy is going to be drill baby drill for the near term, no doubt. And after a certain time horizon, it will look very Jetson-esque. We are the ones who get to decide how long that time horizon is.

The rock wall is coming. We can start building an incline now or wait for the market to send us a signal that we have a serious wall to claim. Ponder that.

Until then, drill baby drill.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/11/02/column-energy-leaders-should-dare-to-think-differently/feed/0Column: Society unsustainable with seven billion peoplehttp://uwire.com/2011/11/01/column-society-unsustainable-with-seven-billion-people/
http://uwire.com/2011/11/01/column-society-unsustainable-with-seven-billion-people/#commentsTue, 01 Nov 2011 16:22:26 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=64082As of Oct. 31, there are seven billion people on the planet. That is the date, according to the U.N., at which Earth was to see the birth of its seven billionth inhabitant. We may already have seven billion already, or we may not. The U.N. made Oct. 31 the date mainly for symbolic reasons to celebrate this monumental feat.

Whether you want to admit it or not, our lovely planet is quickly reaching its carrying capacity, which is the population that Earth can sustain in a responsible manner. We may have already reached the carrying capacity, but even so, the fact that 24,000 people around the world die each day due to starvation, and that billions more live in dire poverty with scarce supplies of drinking water and food, should tell us that something is wrong here.

And with an overpopulation of a planet comes, first and foremost, the problem of natural resources. Petroleum, by all accounts, will be depleted within the next century across the planet, and with that comes an unspeakable problem. Everything that we come into contact with in our lives came into contact with some form of petroleum throughout its production process. There is no escaping that.

The most important of which is food. Food that we eat, especially in industrialized countries, cannot be produced without extensive use of petroleum. We have come to a point where, if all the oil dried up tomorrow, food that is produced in America could not be made to feed even ourselves, let alone the vast amounts that go to other countries.

We have reached a point of entropy in which we have become disconnected with the natural processes in which food is produced. When oil becomes as important, or more so, than water and sunlight to grow food, we have to take a step back and look at what we are doing.

Something that never comes up when the issue of overpopulation of the earth comes up, especially in the mainstream media, is the global economic system. We are told not to question the powers that be when it comes to an economic system who demands one thing and one thing only: more.

The economic system of neoliberalism has created a system of dependence in which the Third World has become enslaved by industrialized countries, either producing food or being raped for its natural resources, in which the former countries see none, or hardly any, of the profits. And this is what we celebrate, being in one of these industrialized nations, of course, as living in a ‘globalized’ world.

The system of corporate capitalism, which has produced corporations that are supra-national, has been able to effectively take control over natural resources in all parts of the world and see to it that the most money for the least input is taken from them. And while these entities are responsible solely to their shareholders, and not to anyone else, the problem of natural resource exhaustion is an immense problem for the seven billion people on Earth.

The highly evolved state of capitalism in which we find ourselves today will not save the planet from itself. It will continue to consume all resources this planet has to offer until capitalism finally collapses on itself like a dying star. And all the people of Earth will have to suffer the consequences for the actions of a few.

Something must change before we as a planet are pushed over the brink in terms of resource depletion. A population cannot survive without basic resources such as food, water and shelter, and the juggernaut of neoliberalism, which consumes without regard, must be altered in order to sustain a global population of seven billion and counting.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/11/01/column-society-unsustainable-with-seven-billion-people/feed/0Column: End parking lot socialismhttp://uwire.com/2011/10/31/column-end-parking-lot-socialism/
http://uwire.com/2011/10/31/column-end-parking-lot-socialism/#commentsMon, 31 Oct 2011 15:48:42 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=62871Most Americans will tell you that they support free markets. When it comes to parking policy, however, even many of the most conservative free marketeers suddenly transform into ardent communists.

They treat the right to park one’s car as an entitlement and behave as though it is the government’s solemn duty to ensure an ample supply of parking spaces wherever they may wish to travel.

Drivers complain bitterly whenever the government fails to fulfill this obligation, and the government responds by either increasing the supply of parking directly, or by passing laws that force private developers to do so.

The parking industry is thus essentially run by the principles of command economics. Government officials, rather than markets, dictate how much parking needs to be supplied. In most cases, they strive to ensure a large enough supply of parking so that it will be available for free; one nation-wide transportation survey found that 99 percent of all car trips in the United States begin and end in free parking spaces.

Free parking may seem to be a good thing at first glance, but the problem with this approach is the same problem that beleaguered the Soviet Union: Command economies are woefully inefficient at distributing resources.

In the book “The High Cost of Free Parking,” Donald Shoup, a professor of urban affairs at U. California, Los Angeles, dedicates more than 700 pages to explaining just how harmful our nation’s parking policies are. Shoup calculates that the size of the total parking subsidy amounts to between $127 billion and $374 billion per year. Of this, drivers only end up paying $3 billion per year.

Parking subsidies work in two ways. First, governments provide a large quantity of parking directly with curbside spaces and government-owned parking garages. Second, the government passes regulations that require developers to build a minimum number of parking spaces when they construct a new building.
When the government provides parking, it sets the price — which is usually zero. Furthermore, even when they charge for it, they usually charge less than what it costs to build and maintain and far less than what they’re worth if they were sold at market value.

On top of this, the federal government gives tax incentives to employers that provide parking to their employees. They may deduct $180 from their income taxes for each parking space they provide their employees. A few years ago, policymakers tried to even this by giving a $100 deduction to public transit, but that will go away in a few years.

Government also subsidizes parking with regulations. In 2009, at the very same time that the Central Corridor light rail was in its final stages of planning, the Minneapolis City Council voted to impose a parking overlay on the University District. This overlay mandates that developers must provide a minimum of one parking space for every two bedrooms that they build.

A four bedroom apartment would have previously required one parking spot, but now requires two. Perhaps this doesn’t strike you as too onerous. But it is a substantially higher supply than the market will bear. The cost of having to provide these extra parking spaces is one of the factors that has driven the development of luxury property in the area. And students who don’t drive are forced to subsidize those who do.

Regulations forcing builders to provide parking simply make no sense. Imagine what would happen if the government passed a law that required all restaurants to include free desserts along with meals. The price of meals would increase to accommodate the price of desserts, and people would consume far more dessert than they do now. Obesity, heart disease and diabetes would all get worse.

In the same way, when people buy a house, or when a business buys a building, they are forced to buy parking along with it. This increases the cost of housing and employment, and increases the consumption of parking.

Another problem subsidizing parking causes is increased congestion. Sixteen studies conducted between 1927 and 2001 found that, on average, 30 percent of the cars in congested urban areas were cruising for parking. Reflect on that for a moment: If we could provide and price parking more sensibly, we could reduce traffic congestion in central cities by almost a third.

There are a few steps we can take to fix the problem of the inefficient allocation of parking. For the parking that governments own directly, they should try to mimic free market policies as closely as possible.

They should follow the lead of San Francisco, which this year implemented a program that prices parking spaces according to demand at different times of day. The city installs sensors on each parking space that can detect whether the spot is occupied or not and uses the information to properly price these parking spots.

Governments should also eliminate parking minimums. If developers feel that there is a need to supply free parking for their buildings, let them do so, but don’t force them. If they believe that free parking is good for their business, let them give it away, but also give them the freedom to sell their parking if they so choose.

Taking these steps will more efficiently allocate parking, eliminate waste, free up money to deal with budget problems and reduce the incidence of other problems that are a byproduct of parking subsidies.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/10/31/column-end-parking-lot-socialism/feed/0Column: Energy myopiahttp://uwire.com/2011/10/31/column-energy-myopia/
http://uwire.com/2011/10/31/column-energy-myopia/#commentsMon, 31 Oct 2011 15:29:39 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=62844The development of unconventional fossil fuel resources like oil sands and shale gas in the past couple of decades puts the renewable energy industry in an unexpected bind. New drilling and exploration technologies have increased the viability of previously inaccessible resources such as those in the Arctic or the depths of the Gulf of Mexico. Consequently, the oil and gas supply hasn’t tightened as quickly as was predicted, and progress towards the much-awaited spike in fossil fuel prices that has been touted for years as the tipping point for renewable energy production has been significantly undermined. Admittedly, energy prices are still high from the average consumer’s standpoint, but they are not nearly high enough for price parity with renewables. For example, the drop in natural gas prices due to recent shale gas exploitation may have pushed the point of price parity between renewables and natural gas back by several decades, if not longer. As a result, the renewable energy industry’s growth has been stunted by the belief that the ameliorative effects of this newfound fossil fuel wealth are sufficient justification for reduced investment in wind, solar, and other clean technologies.

Although big oil and the renewable energy industry have long been at odds, even the greener camp has been able to find a few reasons to applaud the recent success of oil and gas: The expansion of unconventional fossil fuel reserves has dramatically improved energy availability around the world. Unconventional fossil fuels have reduced our dependence on the Middle East for oil, and Canada, with its large oil sands resources, has replaced members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries as the largest exporter of oil to the United States. They have also eased geopolitical tensions as countries like India, Brazil, and China have discovered exploitable oil and gas reserves in their own backyards with the help of much improved exploration and drilling technologies. Furthermore, unconventional fossil fuels have kept energy prices low for millions of residents of developing countries, for whom expensive renewables like wind and solar don’t jive with the realities of their pocketbooks. Especially in times of global economic turmoil, governments that have found it hard to justify expensive investments in clean energy have benefitted from more rapid returns on investment in fossil fuels.

It is tough to fight realities like these, and renewable energy advocates are quickly finding that some of their most potent arguments against fossil fuels are losing steam. Oil isn’t as expensive as we thought it would be, reserves aren’t necessarily concentrated in the hands of OPEC, and global supplies of fossil fuels are probably going to last longer than soothsayers predicted. So where does that leave renewables? Are they destined to remain relegated to the sidelines in global energy portfolios?

We can give fossil fuels some credit for the improvements mentioned above, but they still don’t constitute a full-fledged solution to our energy problems. An independent study recently conducted by the Berkeley Earth Project has validated the much-maligned climate findings of the University of East Anglia (home of the “Climategate” scandal), thereby reaffirming the salient threat of global climate change. The recent oil and gas boom is only going to exacerbate this problem since it has led to a corresponding increase in global carbon emissions and a decrease in renewables activity and investment. Countries like Brazil and China, instead of turning to renewables to meet their growing energy needs, are eagerly exploiting new coal and oil reserves that have become accessible only in the past few years due to technological improvements. Petrobras, the state-controlled oil company of Brazil, last year raised $70 billion for the development of newly discovered deepwater oil reserves off Brazil’s coast, thereby locking in investment that might otherwise have gone towards renewables projects.

Additionally, let’s not forget that the “low prices” of fossil fuels aren’t really that low if we consider long-ignored social costs. Oil and gas that come from harder to reach deepwater wells and oil sands rely on increasingly energy-intensive processes with much higher carbon footprints. In fact, barrel for barrel, Canadian oil sands emit about 25 percent more greenhouse gases than Saudi oil because they are so much harder to extract. Carbon emissions aside, extracting oil from oil sands not only requires huge amounts of water, but also wreaks havoc on surface ecosystems as huge swathes of land have to be cleared during the process. Furthermore, I do not need to remind everyone of Deepwater Horizon to highlight the risks of unconventional fossil fuel resources. These risks only increase as companies race to harness unconventional fossil fuels from reserves that are getting harder and harder to access.

Unless we figure out how to price the externalities of burning fossil fuels, such as carbon emissions, environmental degradation, and public health impacts, renewables will remain at a disadvantage to fossil fuels for much longer than we can afford. This problem is compounded by the fact that Congress doesn’t seem to be in the mood to level the playing field for renewables. Federal tax credits, such as the production tax credit for wind, are due to expire at the end of 2012, and the recent budget debacles suggest that Congress is unlikely to reapprove such spending measures. However, due to the disproportionate political influence of some lobbies, the billions of dollars of annual subsidies to the oil and gas industry are likely to remain in place, even though oil and gas companies are making record profits.

Given such externalities and risks, we need to take a step back and reevaluate some of the progress fossil fuels are making. Are the short-term benefits of rapid oil and gas development worth the longterm tradeoffs associated with climate change and pollutant emissions? As such, it’s in our best interest not to let the recent success of unconventional fossil fuels undermine continued investment in renewables. Only a balanced approach to energy development will provide a long-term solution to our energy woes.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/10/31/column-energy-myopia/feed/0Ex-White House official talks climatehttp://uwire.com/2011/10/28/ex-white-house-official-talks-climate/
http://uwire.com/2011/10/28/ex-white-house-official-talks-climate/#commentsFri, 28 Oct 2011 19:18:57 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=59687Carol Browner, former director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy under President Obama, spoke yesterday at the U. Virginia Law School about environmental protection and public health challenges facing the United States.

Browner, who was also the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under President Clinton, talked about the environmental apathy before 1970.

“City after city, state after state had essentially failed to protect the environment,” she said.

In 1970, however, the first Earth Day was established, prompting nearly 21 million people across the nation to protest pollution and promote environmentalism, she said. Later that year, President Nixon established the EPA, which works to establish and regulate environmental policy.

Although the EPA has enacted many new environmental policy measures throughout its history, Browner said environmental protection is a continuous process.

“The task of environmental protection can not be completed in a year, a decade, or even a lifetime,” she said. This task has become even more important today with the recognition of global climate change, she added, noting that global carbon dioxide emissions have nearly quadrupled since 1950.

Browner said the emergence of global climate change has more permanent effects, even if people don’t notice all of them. Weather reflects these abnormal changes in the global climate.

“This year in April we had 600 tornados in United States in one month,” she said. Rises in sea level are also indicators of global climate change, and these rises are “not reversible,” she said.

Failing to mitigate climate change now would lead to an “irreversibly changed planet,” Browner said.

Despite mounting evidence of environmental shifts, she said a central problem in changing these shifts is the unwillingness to act.

“We must be prepared, as we have been in the past, to set standards based on the weight of the evidence,” Browner said. She added that 98 percent of scientists agree on the reality of climate change despite the doubts of the minority.

Browner is convinced that American ingenuity can help us “rise to the challenge” posed by global climate change.

She said the relentless nature of the 24-hour news cycle may have confused the public about the importance and implications of climate change, however. Extensive media coverage of the economy has made it hard to sustain a conversation about climate change.

“We seemed to have returned to an old argument in Washington — that we have to choose between the environment and the economy,” she said. Browning said innovative environmental solutions and a strong economy are mutually beneficial, so no choice is necessary.

Despite the challenges, Americans “must rededicate ourselves” to work together to find a solution and rise to the challenge, she said.

The event was sponsored by the Student Legal Forum, a Law School organization dedicated to keeping aspiring lawyers informed. The Environmental Law Forum and the Virginia Environmental Law Journal co-sponsored the event.

Law student Emily Auerbach said she “liked the way that [Browner] was looking towards the future” and that she appreciated her moderate approach to controversial issues. “She had us meet at a middle point where we could all agree that improving the environment is important,” Auerbach said.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/10/28/ex-white-house-official-talks-climate/feed/0Using microscopic algae to solve big fuel problemshttp://uwire.com/2011/10/26/using-microscopic-algae-to-solve-big-fuel-problems/
http://uwire.com/2011/10/26/using-microscopic-algae-to-solve-big-fuel-problems/#commentsWed, 26 Oct 2011 15:17:05 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=56666Heike Winter-Sederoff has an eye for recognizing the potential in some of the smallest and mostly commonly overlooked things.

This summer Sederoff, assistant professor of plant biology at North Carolina State U., sent experiments on a common garden weed to the International Space Station. Now she’s looking to make biofuels out of an algae commonly used in fish feed to make salmon orange. She’s also investigating the oily properties of the camelina seed, a mustard plant that thrives in poor conditions.

Unlike biodiesel and ethanol, Sederoff is using the Dunaliella salina algae to produce lipids and fatty acids that burn similarly to petroleum.

“The oils this algae produces will be converted into a fuel that can be substituted for petroleum based fuels,” Sederoff said.

Unlike ethanol, which is only a supplement, algae biofuels can replace petroleum fuels 100 percent.

“Ethanol is only an additive,” Sederoff said. “If you’re driving a car you can only use 15 percent of your fuel as ethanol. The biofuels we are making will be ‘drop in replacements,’ or complete substitutes.”

Sederoff said algae fuels will be the most viable solution to finding a replacement to oil. After starting in 2009, the multidiscipline research team has invested their efforts in to converting natural algae into small fuel factories.

“The algae can control how its genes serve its needs, like any organism. This includes lipid production and control. We want to override that,” Sederoff said. “We want to keep that oil production switch on.”

Amy Gruden, associate professor of microbiology, is working to isolate genes in extremophile archaeabacteria—the living relics of simple prokaryotic bacteria that thrive in extreme conditions. High salinity environments interest Gruden and Sederoff most.

“I work with halophilic bacteria, which are extremely salt tolerant,” Gruden said. “The algae we are using is a halophile itself, so it grows in sea water. The reason why we went with this is so we don’t have to worry about freshwater usage, which is a commodity we want to save on in the biofuels process.”

Gruden is working to transform extremophile genes into the genetic material of the algae, but the team hasn’t been successful in finding the exact locus, or location on a chromosome, to place the bacteria genes.

“So far the algae has been spitting the genes back at us, but all we need is some time to find where it will fit,” Sederoff said. “Give us time, we just got started.”

The research team just sequenced the genetic blueprint of the Dunaliella algae through an institution in China, according to Sederoff.

Although Sederoff’s lab on the top floor of Gardner Hall is one of only a handful of labs looking into the potential of algae, the biofuel business is becoming a topic serious international examination.

“Biofuels, just like petroleum, is an international business and it’s only going to grow. It’s got to.” Sederoff said. “In Southeast Asia there is a big business in palm oil, another biofuel option.”

According to Gruden and Sederoff, the military is looking to turn to biofuels in the near future. Sederoff said any garage can produce a battery that can power a truck, but aircraft rely on hydrocarbon fuels for combustion. The Air Force plans to operate on 50 percent biofuels by 2016.

“The military has made a huge commitment to biofuels,” Sederoff said. “And if the military can become independent on oil, then we can forget about those wars.”

In addition to algae-based biofuels, Sederoff is researching the camelina seed, which has a high oil content of 40 percent according to the USDA. This robust plant grows in poor soils and dry climates and requires little fertilizer. The Native American Resource Council for Energy is keen to build camerlina farms and processing plants reservations—which are historically infamous for being on marginal lands.

Unlike sugarcane or corn-derived ethanol, algae and camelina biofuels won’t compete with the food supply, according to Sederoff.

“Producing ethanol requires incredible amounts of fertilizer and fresh water, so it’s unsustainable,” Sederoff said. “We can culture our algae in salt water. We can grow camelina blindfolded. So we really thing this could be our solution.”

According to Sederoff, biofuels have come a long way since the beginning, but she thinks this new generation of biofuels will be the answer to the post-petroleum energy market.

“It’s exciting to be on the cutting edge, but it still requires a lot of work,” Sederoff said. “But it’s been an honor working with the whole spectrum—biologists, engineers, economists, biochemists, microbiologists—to try to solve our current issues.”

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/10/26/using-microscopic-algae-to-solve-big-fuel-problems/feed/0Global temperature up by 1 degree Celsius since 1950s, according to studyhttp://uwire.com/2011/10/24/global-temperature-up-by-1-degree-celsius-since-1950s-according-to-study/
http://uwire.com/2011/10/24/global-temperature-up-by-1-degree-celsius-since-1950s-according-to-study/#commentsMon, 24 Oct 2011 15:55:46 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=54565Amidst allegations of bias, the Berkeley Earth group has concluded that global warming is happening, according to the results of its study on temperature data released Thursday.

Over the course of about one year, the team, led by U. California-Berkeley physics professor Richard Muller and composed of climate experts, statisticians and physicists — including Nobel Prize-winning UC Berkeley professor Saul Perlmutter — compiled 1.6 billion temperature measurements and found “reliable evidence” of a rise in the average world land temperature of about one degree Celsius since the mid-1950s.

The study was tailored to address specific concerns raised by climate change skeptics, such as the urban heat island effect — the phenomenon in which the temperature of an urban area is significantly warmer than the rural areas surrounding it.

“There were huge uncertainties in the accuracy of the thermometers,” Muller said. “Many (stations) were close to buildings or other sources of heat that could greatly distort the picture.”

The study found the effect to be “locally large and real” but not significant enough to have a large impact on the rise in average land temperature because only a small percentage of the Earth’s land is urban.

Muller’s team has been criticized by members of the scientific community because the research is funded in part by the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation. Koch is the co-owner of Koch Industries, Inc., a conglomerate that operates oil refineries across the United States and Alaska, which calls into question the team’s ability to generate an unbiased report, according to Michael Mann, professor of meteorology at Pennsylvania State University.

However, Elizabeth Muller, project manager of the Berkeley Earth group and Richard Muller’s daughter, said contributions from Koch in no way affected how the research was conducted.

Elizabeth Muller said the purpose of the study was to look at what occurred from the 1950s to the present — not to predict the future.

Mann said the findings do not serve to further advance the study of global warning.

“Muller’s report simply verifies what scientists have already known, and this study did not further our scientific understanding of the problem,” he said.

The Berkeley Earth study comes at a time when public opinion on global warming has shifted. An October 2010 poll from the Pew Research Center found that 59 percent of Americans believed there is solid evidence that the earth is warming — down from 79 percent in 2006.

Fewer people believe global warming is an issue because environmental issues have been replaced by economic concerns, said William Patzert, a climatologist and oceanographer who has worked at the California Institute of Technology’s NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory for more than 28 years.

With the study’s results verifying previous findings, Muller said it is time for politicians to move into a dialogue about how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“Many of us believe we have to switch from our fossil fuel addiction to renewable energy sources, and green not only our homes but our country,” Patzert said. “If we do rid ourselves of fossil fuels and go to renewable energy, we might get hit in the head with a ping pong ball rather than a bowling ball.”

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/10/24/global-temperature-up-by-1-degree-celsius-since-1950s-according-to-study/feed/0Column: Find global warminghttp://uwire.com/2011/10/21/column-find-global-warming/
http://uwire.com/2011/10/21/column-find-global-warming/#commentsFri, 21 Oct 2011 19:29:13 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=50771In a recent New York Times article, environmental journalist Elisabeth Rosenthal asked, “Where did global warming go?” It is the question of a confused and frustrated person who was hopeful about climate change mitigation in 2008 but has lately become more pessimistic. In many ways, her feelings echo mine.

Both politicians and the public seem less concerned with climate change than they were three years ago, and governmental action seems unlikely in the near future. While this can partially be attributed to the powerful fossil-fuel lobby and the economic recession, I think a large part of the problem stems from the way we talk about climate change. Climate scientist and Princeton professor Robert Socolow addressed this in an essay published last month.

Socolow’s main claim to fame in the climate world is a 2004 paper that argued that, contrary to popular belief at the time, it was possible to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions for the next 50 years using technologies we already had. Though no technology was sufficient on its own, we could achieve this goal if we combined seven technologies. (Disclaimer: My thesis advisor, Stephen Pacala, coauthored this paper.)

Many climate scientists and activists greeted this paper with excitement. Here was a precise, doable plan for the next 50 years. Surely the government and the public would take heed. In his recent essay, Socolow mused on why his paper failed to galvanize action. Mainly he sees this as a failure of communication, and I think there is truth to what he says. The current rhetoric is both divisive and alienating. Many skeptics refer to climate advocates (both scientists and activists) as global warming alarmists. Activists, on the other hand, dismiss skeptics as climate deniers and idiots. Certainly, this is not a productive way to have a conversation.

The thing is, both camps are correct. There is uncertainty in the science and as a result, climate models predict a variety of possible future scenarios. These scenarios include both extremes — situations where carbon emissions do not have much environmental impact (for a while, that is) and situations where the world spirals out of control with a five-meter sea level rise by 2100, massive drought and flooding, human conflict over resources and ultimately massive human mortality. More likely is a middle scenario, with significant harmful effects that are not of such apocalyptic magnitudes. The problem is, it is hard to predict exactly where the threshold levels are. We know that increased carbon dioxide levels will have certain effects, we just don’t know when exactly those effects will materialize.

Scientists and activists seem reticent to mention uncertainty or that the more stable scenario is possible (though I will add unlikely). They fear that doing so will lead to inaction. But, rather than spurring action, the “alarmist” approach has opened the door for skeptics to poke holes in the story and to accuse climate scientists of lying or distorting the data. A different approach, as proposed by Socolow, would be to present climate change as a risk, rather than as a doomsday prophecy lurking around the corner. In doing so, scientists and activists would acknowledge that the scenario painted by skeptics is plausible (in the short term — at some point, our emissions will catch up with us), thus at least somewhat neutralizing that argument. Climate scientists and activists would seem reasonable and trustworthy rather than extremist. And if we told Americans that there is a small chance that greenhouse gas emissions might have little effect over the next 100 years, an equally small chance that these emissions could be catastrophic, and a big chance that these emissions would cause very severe (but not catastrophic) problems, I think most would rather play it safe. We could get past this stalemate of “he said, she said.”

But the issues addressed by Socolow are not the only problems with climate change communication. Part of the problem stems from how we talk about the environment more generally. Climate change and environmentalist rhetoric often pits humans against or outside of the environment. We must “save” the planet. Though dramatic expressions may rouse some, I believe that this strategy is actually alienating to many. No one wants to save the planet — or even cute polar bears — if it is at the expense of oneself or one’s family. No one wants to save the planet by destroying the economy. Skeptics often warn that our focus on climate change distracts attention and resources from alleviating world poverty.

But the truth is, we are part of the system and our rhetoric and policy should both reflect that. Alarmist scenarios are so alarming because of how they affect people and societies, not merely because of how they impact animals or plants. If greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, the problems of the developing world such as drought, hunger, poverty and conflict will only get worse. As one of my EEB professors explains, the world is not made up of ecosystems, it is made up of social-ecological systems in which we affect the environment and the environment affects us. It is not us or the environment. It is us and the environment. By saving the planet, we are saving ourselves.

Unless governments invest heavily in climate finance immediately, 600 million people could lose their homes, while governments lose $200 billion in assets in developing countries in the future, said Gevorg Sargsyan, program coordinator for Climate Investment Funds at the World Bank, during a speech at U. Texas.

“I personally believe that climate change, along with the unsustainable exploitation of the environment, is the biggest threat that human civilization is facing,” Sargsyan said. “It’s a result of the largest market failure of supporting funds.”

Sargsyan said investment in climate finance to support technologies and initiatives that reduce carbon emissions is a necessary measure that should be taken as soon as possible. If comprehensive global participation in carbon reduction is delayed for 20 years, the cost of avoiding a two degree Celsius increase in global temperatures will double. Sargsyan said the cost of avoiding the two degree increase is not yet known, but is greater than the current $8 billion set aside annually for climate finance. The United States must contribute to climate finance and reduce emissions if global climate goals are to be met, Sargsyan said.

“If the U.S. is not part of the deals, the increase of cost will be 60 percent more for everyone else,” Sargsyan said.

In addition to human and economic costs of maintaining the status quo, Sargsyan said the fate of the Amazon rainforest, the Arctic tundra, coral reefs and existence of half of the world’s species depend on initiating climate reforms.

The solution to the climate issues will come from investing in new technologies to reduce carbon emissions, Sargsyan said.

“To act differently is just a mind-set issue,” Sargsyan said. “We need to come up with innovative ideas that will be transformational. Business as usual, even in areas of the clean energy sector just will not help us.”

Varun Rai, assistant professor in the LBJ School of Public Affairs, said UT is working to explore solutions to climate change.

“There is a lot of work being done at UT to explore changing science, technology, legal and policy issues and the business aspect of climate change,” Rai said. “We as a university must discuss what the problems are and how we find solutions to them.”

Jinyu Zhang, an energy and earth resources graduate student, said he believes today’s generation is responsible for solving the climate change issue.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/10/21/government-must-support-climate-change-initiatives-now-speaker-notes/feed/0Arctic sea ice retreats to second-lowest recorded level in Septemberhttp://uwire.com/2011/10/21/arctic-sea-ice-retreats-to-second-lowest-recorded-level-in-september/
http://uwire.com/2011/10/21/arctic-sea-ice-retreats-to-second-lowest-recorded-level-in-september/#commentsFri, 21 Oct 2011 16:54:43 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=50476The amount of sea ice covering the Arctic Ocean was at its second lowest recorded level last month, according to satellite data from NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center. The average ice extent this September was 4.61 million square kilometers, which was 2.43 million square kilometers below the 1979-2000 average.

Sea ice, which is frozen seawater between one and four meters thick, expands in the winter and melts in the summer, due to the position of the sun in the sky varying with the seasons. Due to this cycle, the minimum amount of sea ice is always in September. The lowest recorded amount of sea ice was in September 2007.

The extent of sea ice decline was, on Sept. 9 this year, at 4.33 million square kilometers. This, as well as the monthly average, was the second lowest recorded daily sea ice extent. This data is part of a long-term trend that has occurred over the past 30-40 years. Sea ice has been declining by about 12 percent since 1979.

“The decline over the last 30 or 40 years of Arctic sea ice is particularly apparent in minimum sea ice extent in September,” Johns Hopkins U. Earth and Planetary Science professor Thomas W.N. Haine said. “People wait every year for that.”

The loss of sea ice will greatly exacerbate the global warming that is already occurring. Ice is white, which means that it has a very high albedo, or reflectiveness. When the Arctic Ocean is covered in sea ice, it is able to reflect the incoming sunlight, which keeps the Arctic cold.

If this ice is decreased, it is replaced by the ocean, which will absorb the sunlight as it has a low albedo. This results in a positive feedback loop, where the sunlight is absorbed by the ocean, which warms the ocean and melts more sea ice. The diminished sea ice then results in a lower albedo, where more sunlight is absorbed, and the Arctic continues to warm.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which has various models detailing global warming in the future, the Arctic warms faster than the global average. This effect is called Arctic amplification.

“Global warming is not the same everywhere, in the Arctic it’s about twice the global average,” Haines said. “The Arctic is a place which is very sensitive to climate change and relatively rapid changes in the environment can occur in the Arctic, more rapidly than, for example, in the middle latitudes.”

Because of this rapid warming, the rate at which sea ice disappears will continue to increase, especially if people do not take steps to combat global warming.

“We’re in an era of global warming, there’s no question about that,” Haines said. “It seems that the global warming is going to continue throughout the 21st century [and] it depends on what people do [about] emissions of carbon dioxide.”

It is very hard to predict exactly what will happen to sea ice in the future, though, eventually, summertime sea ice will disappear entirely.

“The Arctic will essentially be open water in the summer…and there will probably be patches of floating [sea] ice, which is very thick, in the summer,” Haines said. “Eventually, the [summer] Arctic sea ice will go. The IPCC models predict that this will happen over a range of time scales, somewhere [in] the middle of the century, between 2030 and 2060.”

However, due to the uncertainty about how fast the sea ice will decline, there is a chance that there will be no more summer sea ice as soon as five years from now.

“There is quite a lot of good evidence to suggest that [the IPCC prediction] is an overestimate on how long it will take for Arctic sea ice to go, so people who study the Arctic specifically rather than the whole global climate system may forecast a [sooner] loss of sea ice,” Haines said. “Maybe in the next five to six years…summer Arctic sea ice will go. Nobody knows for sure, but I’ve heard people say that by 2016, it will have essentially gone.”

Former Vice President Al Gore focused on the Great Lakes over global climate issues and the continual fight to eliminate pollution during the Oct. 13 keynote address at the International Joint Commission’s Great Lakes Water Quality Biennial Meeting hosted by Wayne State U.

Touching on topics ranging from the economy to the “global climate crisis,” the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize winner spoke for about an hour to a near-capacity crowd at the Community Arts Auditorium.

“We have tremendous challenges in the global economy,” Gore said. “I think our approach to the economy is connected to our approach to the environment.”

His appearance was part of Great Lakes Week, a four-day event for six environmental advocate groups to convene and discuss the future of the region.

The International Joint Commission was established in 1909 by the U.S. and Canada as a means to help prevent and resolve problems with the use and quality of boundary waters and to advise both countries on questions about water resources, according to its website.

The commission is also responsible for enforcing adherence to the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement of 1978—a pact between the two nations—which in part entails documenting “Areas of Concern” and reacting accordingly.

The Teach Great Lakes! website defines Areas of Concern as “geographic areas that fail to meet the general or specific objectives of the agreement where such failure has caused or is likely to cause impairment of beneficial use of the area’s ability to support aquatic life.”

Currently, 42 Great Lakes fall in the group.

“There are social impacts and opportunities to updating sewer systems for drinking water … in and around the Great Lakes,” Gore said. “You can focus on the expenditure for this, but you can also focus on the jobs at a time when we need to put people back to work. There really is a lot of work to be done.”

He said the best way to handle global warming is to approach it as a global challenge.

“It’s extremely difficult, just as World War II and the Cold War was,” he said. “Just as winning a local battle can turn the tide in a regional conflict, and just as a regional conflict can turn the outcome of a global conflict…the winning of these struggles to protect the environment locally and the regional battles can affect the global challenges.”

Gore compared big business’ effort to delegitimize the threat of climate change to the misleading campaigns of tobacco companies in the 20th century.

“Just as tobacco companies set out with their money to create artificial doubts about smoking and lung cancer, a whole lot of the largest carbon polluters have done exactly the same thing,” Gore said. “They’ve put a lot of money into phony scientific reports to give artificial doubts. Internal documents come out from companies where the scientists tell them the science of global climate crises is true.”

Furthermore, he said, 97-98 percent of climate scientists agree that the global climate crisis needs to be addressed.

Gore, who wrote the book “Earth in Balance” in 1992, left politics after losing the presidential election in 2000. Since then, he’s focused on showing the detrimental effects humans have on climate change. He won an Academy Award in 2006 for his documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” which as the synopsis says, was a campaign to “educate citizens about global warming via a comprehensive slide show that, by his own estimate, he has given more than a thousand times.”

Gore did not grant human beings a pass for their contributions to the climate shift.

“We put 90 million tons of global warming pollution into the atmosphere every 24 hours,” Gore said. “We’re still acting as if it’s perfectly OK to use this thin-shelled atmosphere as an open sewer. It’s not OK. We need to listen to the scientists. We need to use the tried and true method of using the best evidence, debating and discussing it, but not pretending that facts are not facts.”

With economic turmoil creeping back into the spotlight, Gore didn’t shy away from addressing the initial causes of the recession that began in 2008, either.

“The sub-prime mortgage characterized a way of thinking that was a flawed assumption,” he said, following with an anecdote about widely used text messaging acronyms.

“When investigators looked at emails they found an acronym I had never heard of – IBGYBG – ‘I’ll be gone, you’ll be gone.’ They knew it was toxic, they knew it was a risk of creating a financial catastrophe. They told themselves, ‘Hey, I’ll be gone you’ll be gone. This catastrophe, if it happens, we’ll make our pile of money and we’ll be out.’ That’s just, not to put a fine point on it, immoral.”

“We have solutions; we can become far more efficient,” he said. “We can save far more money and create far more jobs while doing it.”

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/10/19/former-vp-al-gore-tackles-pollution/feed/0Column: A parched and thirsty futurehttp://uwire.com/2011/10/17/column-a-parched-and-thirsty-future/
http://uwire.com/2011/10/17/column-a-parched-and-thirsty-future/#commentsMon, 17 Oct 2011 15:44:21 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=44917Leading water conservationist, Amy Vickers put it rather succinctly: “America’s biggest drinking problem isn’t alcohol, it’s lawn watering.” Rare, yet essential to life, fresh water is the precious elixir we take for granted. Among all of the environmental specters confronting humanity in the 21st century – global warming, destroyed rainforests, over-fished seas – the catastrophic shortage of fresh water is the most urgent and the most perilous. The Economist estimates that by 2050, one third of the world’s population will lack a clean, secure source of water. The looming freshwater crisis has very real consequences for the rest of the world and pervades every sphere of life, potentially having disastrous effects of the environment, society and politics.

So how did we get to this point? As the world’s population has soared, so too has the usage of water. The World Water Council states that water consumption has risen by a whopping six hundred percent in the past decade. As the pace of development accelerates, we destroy wetlands, cut down forests, and deplete natural catchment areas. To make matters worse, we pollute our rivers and lakes allowing chemicals, sewage and waste to contaminate our already scarce supplies. And then there is the wanton waste– from dripping faucets to rarely used swimming pools, we are consuming fresh water at a foolhardy rate.

Environmental & Human Costs

First, in the human scramble to secure water, the non-human consumers, flora and fauna, are simply cast aside. We sink wells, pump ground water, and drain bogs and swamps. But we fail to realize that we are setting off an inevitable cataclysmic chain reaction. By diminishing swamps and wetlands, we are killing algae, vegetation and aquatic life. If they die, the oxygen and filtered water they provide will be forever lost to mankind. In our thirst for more water we build our dams higher and we dig our wells deeper, changing the topography and environment forever. In the process, we are decimating aquatic life, animal life and human settlements.

As fresh water becomes scarce, our planet will be forced even deeper into famine. Already, parts of Spain, India, Sudan and Tunisia have turned into semiarid deserts. It is no coincidence that the most arid and driest areas of our planet are also the hungriest. Water is also essential to health and sanitation. According to WHO, one in six people lack access to clean drinking water. Half of the world’s hospital beds are filled with people suffering from water related illnesses. By 2020 there will be 76 million deaths due to water borne diseases alone – 76 million deaths, all for the lack of a glass of clean drinking water.

Interestingly, an often-overlooked fact is that water is in many ways a gender issue. In fact, it is the girls who fetch water in the developing world, often spending hours walking miles to carry home every precious drop. It is the girls who are kept out of school to fetch this water. It is the girls whose education is terminated because of a lack of clean toilet facilities. It is a shortage of water, which perpetuates their unequal status, generation after generation.

Political Consequences

Finally let me turn to the political consequences. Fresh water is not only scarce, it is inequitably distributed. Let me give you an example. Canada has 20% of the world’s fresh water for 0.5% of the world’s population, Mexico has less than 1% for 4% of the world’s population. To put it another way, each Canadian has 100 million liters per capita while a Mexican has just 4 million liters available. As water has gradually become “the oil of the 21st century,” we are seeing political conflicts erupt. Even today, China, Bolivia, India and Spain are engaged in water conflicts. In 2009 alone, the Pacific Institute states that there were 6 new outbreaks of strife and violence over water. The stakes are high; violent conflict is an ever-greater threat.

Water is life. It is the briny broth of our origin, the pounding circulatory system of the world. As Barbara Kingsolver says, we have been too slow to give up on the myth of Earth’s infinite generosity. Rather grandly, we have overdrawn our accounts. Even in arid Arizona, golf courses and lawns abound. We need to think carefully about our incessant loads of laundry and dishwashing cycles. In the last decade, China’s Yellow River has frequently lost its way to the Pacific, the Aral Sea has shrunk by half, and last year the Rio Grande dried up before it reached the Gulf of Mexico. Do we really need a louder wake up call?

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/10/17/column-a-parched-and-thirsty-future/feed/0Researchers’ modification of switchgrass may pave way to more efficient biofuel energyhttp://uwire.com/2011/10/17/researchers%e2%80%99-modification-of-switchgrass-may-pave-way-to-more-efficient-biofuel-energy/
http://uwire.com/2011/10/17/researchers%e2%80%99-modification-of-switchgrass-may-pave-way-to-more-efficient-biofuel-energy/#commentsMon, 17 Oct 2011 14:13:11 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=44874Research centered around a small, fast-growing type of grass may be leading the way to a more efficient and high-yield source of energy.

In a report published Oct. 10 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, U. California-Berkeley research geneticist George Chuck, a geneticist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Plant Gene Expression Center, and his team genetically modified switchgrass so that it produces increased amounts of starch — the product which is eventually broken down into biofuel.

By introducing a gene — corngrass1 — from corn into switchgrass, Chuck and his team created a plant that never develops past a juvenile state and yields more than twice the amount of starch produced by unmodified switchgrass. These traits make the modified plant easier and less costly to break down into fuel because it contains less of the organic polymer lignin, which strengthens cell walls.

While Chuck said that the finding, a result of approximately six years of experimentation, will not be applicable to biofuel production anytime soon, the research could be a step toward addressing energy issues.

“We’re looking for a lot of alternatives to corn, and right now people are talking about alternatives like switchgrass,” said Chuck. “I think there’s going to be lots of different answers to the whole energy crisis, and this will definitely be a part of it. We could potentially solve our transportation energy problems just by growing crops like switchgrass.”

Chuck added that switchgrass has come to be seen as a viable alternative to fossil fuels and corn as a source of energy because it has a much higher net energy gain than corn and uses a marginal amount of crop land.

Greg Hartgraves, senior director of research for Poet LLC, the largest corn-based ethanol producer in the United States, said that the company has begun to consider crops other than corn, including switchgrass.

“Humans have made alcohol from cellulose for thousands of years, but the challenge we face is making it economically viable in large quantities for fuel,” Hartgraves said. “Anything that can increase carbohydrate content per unit of weight of biomass can have a significant impact on the economics.”

The company has begun construction on a processing facility in Iowa, scheduled to open in 2013, which will produce ethanol from sources such as corn biomass but may also work toward using switchgrass.

Although many companies and scientists say that biofuels are increasingly becoming an inevitable alternative to fossil fuels, the idea has met with criticism from other scientists.

Tadeusz Patzek, professor of petroleum and geosystems engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, said that the modified switchgrass may be more dangerous than helpful.

“Older plants need lignin for structural stiffness,” Patzek said. “So the ‘always young’ plants, which are also huge, will lay on the ground, be stunted in growth and die … If these modified switchgrass genes were to spread to wild grasses, the impact would be catastrophic.”

However, Chuck said that the fact that the plants are fixed in a juvenile phase of development means that they never flower and thus never spread their seed.

Chuck added that using native grass like switchgrass is not new and could actually help the land it grows on.

“Native grasses such as switchgrass … actually help preserve, or even improve cropland, compared to growing corn which causes loss of top soil and nitrogen runoff,” Chuck said in an email.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/10/17/researchers%e2%80%99-modification-of-switchgrass-may-pave-way-to-more-efficient-biofuel-energy/feed/0Study looks into benefits of reflective roofshttp://uwire.com/2011/10/17/study-looks-into-benefits-of-reflective-roofs/
http://uwire.com/2011/10/17/study-looks-into-benefits-of-reflective-roofs/#commentsMon, 17 Oct 2011 14:09:24 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=44870Researchers from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory are investigating how reflective roofs can save on electric bills and send solar radiation back into space.

Lab researchers are measuring how white, reflective roofs can save money on an individual level by studying whether they reduce a building’s air conditioning costs. On a global level, the scientists are exploring the possibility that reflective roofs can cool the earth by reflecting solar radiation back into space. The scientists hope to publish the results in April.

“We are studying the radiative cooling benefit of employing reflective roofs in urban settings and what the radiative cooling benefit means to the extent that we would be able to cool the earth,” said Marc Fischer, co-investigator for the study and staff scientist at the lab.

Fischer said that using white surfaces instead of dark ones on roofs cool areas below. When buildings have white roofs in hot climates, it generally keeps the rooms below at a much cooler temperature, he said.

During sunny days, white roofs can reflect about 80 percent of the sun’s radiation back to space, while dark roofs usually absorb approximately 90 percent of that radiation, which then gets transferred to rooms below and increases air conditioning costs, according to Surabi Menon, lead scientist for the study and staff scientist at the lab.

“If you reflect away this solar radiation from a building, you don’t need to spend as much electricity or money with an air conditioning unit in warm climates,” Fischer said. “Having a reflective surface saves you energy and money.”

While the research studies a reflective roof’s impact on the individual level, it also focuses on measuring how much heat is reflected off the white roofs and back into space, said Francisco Salamanca, a co-investigator of the study and postdoctoral fellow at the lab, in an email.

When solar radiation is reflected off white roofs, some of it gets caught in the layer of pollutants that lingers in the earth’s atmosphere, which Fischer termed the “warming blanket.” Fischer said that this layer, which prevents solar radiation from exiting the atmosphere, is usually heavier in urban industrial environments, Fischer said.

Because a location’s air quality and climate can have such a significant effect on the efficacy of reflective roof, the researchers are conducting tests in India, which has both clean and dirty air sectors, according to Menon.

Although white roofs are advantageous in warm climates near the equator, reflecting solar radiation is not as beneficial in colder climates or locations that experience mostly cloudy conditions, Fischer said.

Fischer said that according to a past campus study, if reflective roofs were installed in most urban — where the presence of smog and poor air quality is typically higher — and low-latitude environments with hot climates, the installments could subtract the equivalent of three years of global fossil fuel

emissions from the atmosphere.
But although installing reflective roofs seems promising, Fischer said these roofs cannot replace better environmental practices.

“Coating roofs white once can subtract three years from the atmosphere, but it is no substitute for refusing fossil fuel CO2 emissions,” Fischer said. “Three years is nothing to a decade or a century. So it is just a small part of a solution to a much bigger problem.”

Solyndra deserves more credit than the media is giving it. But not much.

Any discussion of the Obama administration’s ill-fated decision to loan more than half a billion dollars to Solyndra, the now-bankrupt solar cell manufacturer, needs to begin with the obvious: the prospects for solar power competing economically as a source of grid power are virtually nil.

The cost of a solar panel system is usually quoted in dollars per watt-peak (peak watts being the output of the system under optimum natural lighting). After compensating for a few factors, primarily the difference between peak wattage and average wattage (the sun does not shine 24 hours per day), a $1/Wp photovoltaic system is roughly cost competitive with a $4000 per kilowatt-capacity nuclear plant (a plausible nuclear price tag which is, under some analyses, almost cost competitive with natural gas or coal).

To put that in perspective: the cheapest photovoltaics we have today cost $4–$6/Wp. Even the best of the world’s solar panel makers (which in my humble opinion, is the U.S’s own First Solar), will be very lucky to reach $1/Wp for just their cells in the next two decades. And should they even reach this goal, they have little hope to reduce the balance of system costs associated with solar. Between the inverter, the labor to install the panels, and all the other ancillary costs, the price one pays on top of the cells themselves for a working photovoltaic collector come to $1.50-$2/Wp. In the final tally, even if you give away all of the components of a solar system for free, just the labor to mount the panels and wire them together is often enough to make solar more costly than natural gas.

And so, even if there were magical leaps and bounds in the technology of solar panel manufacturers, some cost components of solar power are going to remain and likely ruin whatever hopeful notions of cost parity that the industry might entertain.

In a paradoxical way, these reasons for why solar power is a pipe dream are also the same reasons why Solyndra deserves more credit than it has gotten. No evolutionary process is going to push solar past the threshold of grid parity — to make solar power work, we need a crazy, long-shot gamble, and Solyndra was just that sort of insane moon shot. Here are the things Solyndra got right:

Firstly, Solyndra avoided the use of silicon in its cells. Polysilicon production uses mature, energy-intensive technologies that are unlikely to make any significant improvements over the next half-century. Even with sizable gains in wafer cutting technology (thinner silicon wafers mean less material per cell), polysilicon is like the labor to mount panels — a large enough and intractable enough cost to sink solar’s long-term prospects. By using thin-film technologies rather than silicon, Solyndra dodged one of the least manageable cost hurdles in the PV industry.

Secondly, Solyndra aimed for high efficiency cells. All else being equal, a panel which captures 24 percent of incident light is going to cost half as much to install, per watt-peak, as a panel which is only 12 percent efficient. This is one of the few ways in which that obstinate dollar of installation labor can be reduced.

And finally, Solyndra hoped to manufacture solar cells in a different form-factor — a cylinder instead of the typical flat panels. This strikes me as lunacy, but at least it indicates Solyndra understood the significance of the challenge facing PV. The cylindrical design, they hoped, would mean less wind shear on the solar collectors and thus reduced mounting needs and lower balance of system costs.

Therefore, as pessimistic as I am about the prospects of photovoltaics, I don’t see the main lesson to be gleaned here as government making bad technology bets. Yes, the technology didn’t pan out (Solyndra’s solar cells cost about $3 more than their competition), but that’s the nature of taking risk; as far as solar technology gambles go, Solyndra was probably the brightest one the government could have made.

And still, the story of Solyndra confirms the view of Larry Summers, that “gov is a crappy VC.” It might be splitting hairs to make this distinction, but while Solyndra might have been the best technology bet in the solar industry, it was one of the worst business bets to be had.

Solyndra’s business management was abysmal — at every level of the company, workers were complaining about huge money wasting. And the timing of the company was terrible. A glut of polysilicon production, the global recession, and the end of hugely generous solar subsidies in Spain meant that Solyndra’s venture was doomed even if the technological gambles paid off.

These are not, as the White House claims, unknowable downsides. These were factors that the federal government had ample time to consider as it made its loan decision. The decision to make the loan to Solyndra came after the Spanish decision to slash their subsidies — and well after the global recession had hit. And the glut in polysilicon was obvious to anyone with even a passing interest in the industry. In 2009, I estimated that just four incumbent firms — firms whose capitalized plants could manufacture polysilicon at $20-30 per kg — could supply the world’s entire foreseeable demand. Today, the price for polysilicon is at roughly $44/kg — as old contracts expire and are re-negotiated, that price should plummet even further.

I was not alone in my assessment — it’s hard to find any market analysts from 2008 onwards who had anything upbeat to say about polysilicon prices. In fact, the market’s outlook on the entire solar manufacturing chain was dismal — the value of solar companies was almost wholly determined by their amount of cash on hand. Their capital, their inventory, their technology and expertise were all worthless; and why not? They were worthless before the crash too, it’s just that governments were more willing to throw away taxpayer monies on worthless products before the recession hit.

That the government could step into this grim scene and so confidently misread it, going so far as to have President Obama make Solyndra the poster child for loan guarantees, demonstrates how truly terrible the government is at picking winners. Even absent any cronyism or corruption (which may still yet surface in the Solyndra case), the government is simply bad at investing taxpayer money in business ventures.

As Obama makes the media rounds, he is claiming that he has no regrets about his decision to dump $535 million into a failing enterprise. But he should — both the loan guarantee program, as well as the specific decision to loan money to Solyndra, are mistakes.

In an effort to combat energy waste nationwide, the National Science Foundation gave a team of four Cornell U. faculty members a four-year, $1.9 million grant to research how to improve energy allocation through a “smart” electrical grid.

One of the researchers’ goals is to develop software to incorporate cloud computing into the smart grid, creating a system in which all information on electricity demand and production is placed in an external storage hub rather than local and individual networks. The professors said they are hoping that the new method of computing will better optimize the way energy is produced and allocated.

According to principal investigator Prof. Lang Tong, electrical and computer engineering, cloud computing would help reduce costs and create better interaction and information exchange between those who consume energy and those who generate it.

In the current system, energy must be used immediately after being generated, so any unused energy is put to waste. However, in the prospective system, that energy could instead be placed in an inventory and used when needed at a later time.

“There’s a lot of potential in incorporating demand,” said Prof. Tim Mount, applied economics and management, a researcher on the project. “Some power plants are only used less than 10 percent of the time … If you could manage demand to be more accommodating to system conditions, you could make conventional generators run consistently. In a way, you’re spreading the capital costs over a lot more hours, which brings the cost down.”

Mount cited electric vehicle batteries as an example of how power in the current system can be better utilized. With a battery, consumers can plug in and charge their electric vehicles overnight. Since the vehicles would be charging at a time when electricity is not generally used, the cost would go down, as well as the amount of time that the power plants are idle.

In addition to the economic aspect of the smart grid, the project is also being analyzed from other angles and disciplines, such as computer science and power systems.

“Involving the consumer in the decision about the cost and the reliability and the type of electric products being consumed is a very different paradigm,” said Prof. Bob Thomas, electrical and computer engineering, another researcher on the project. “It requires lots of communication, it requires lots of economic contracts, it requires an engineering of technical devices that actually allow you to do all this.”

According to Prof. Ken Birman, computer science, a researcher on the project, the use of cloud computing in his field raises numerous issues that the researchers hope to explore and resolve. For example, he said that with the new power grid, homes could be more susceptible to burglaries if burglars could access information on power usage of the individual house, enabling them to determine whether residents are home.

“A lot of these are problems that nobody has thought about, but not necessarily problems that can’t be solved,” Birman said. “Our belief is that we should do that research and if we’re lucky, we’ll answer these questions with good answers, and companies that build things like Android would pick up the solutions and maybe build even better ones. And just like that, the cloud will start to be a place where we can do these kinds of things safely.”

The Cornell professors will be working alongside professors from Georgia State University and the University of California, Berkeley, as well as graduate students from each school.

“It’s exciting to work with people from very different disciplines,” Tong said. “You get the chance to learn from them very different angles in attacking problems.”

The research team has high hopes for the future of Cornell in accordance with their smart grid project.

“Cornell wants to be a leader in this area, so it’s important for us to get out there and begin to have a real impact,” Birman said.

“This is the next frontier,” Thomas said. “This is where things are headed so it’s hard not to be interested. It’s just a great time to be working on this project.”

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/10/14/cornell-researchers-explore-smart-grid-technology/feed/0New pesticide could save billions of dollarshttp://uwire.com/2011/10/13/new-pesticide-could-save-billions-of-dollars/
http://uwire.com/2011/10/13/new-pesticide-could-save-billions-of-dollars/#commentsThu, 13 Oct 2011 18:24:38 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=41806A new pesticide could potentially save the agricultural business billions of dollars annually by killing crop-eating pests, said David Denlinger, the lead researcher in the study at Ohio State U.

Denlinger, a professor of entomology and evolution, ecology and organismal biology at OSU, explained that insects in the midwest only live during the warmer months when there is food for them to eat. In the colder months, crop-eating pests go into a period of dormancy, much like bears or squirrels. This hibernation state is called diapause in insects.

“Many insects will spend nine or 10 months of the year in this dormant state,” Denlinger said.

Denlinger and his team of researchers, funded by a U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S.-Israel Binational Agricultural Research and Development Fund research grants, have identified the hormone that breaks the insects out of this hibernation. In doing so, they can essentially control the insects’ hibernation, Denlinger said.

Through some modifications of the hormone, Denlinger is able to break diapause when he wants and also make diapause last longer.

This means that, if injected with this chemical, an insect could wake up in the middle of winter and freeze to death. Or it could sleep through the summer feast and wake up in the fall to harvested fields and starve to death, according to Denlinger.

“It would be a form of ecological suicide, if you will,” Denlinger said.

The corn earworm was a main target in this research, which is the insect that eats the top of the corn of the cob before a consumer gets a chance to.

“The types of insects that we worked on are major agricultural pests,” Denlinger said. “Currently, heavy insecticide use is directed against them.”

Richard McGinnis, a farmer from southwest Morrow county, has about 1,600 acres of land on which he grows corn and soybeans. He is skeptical of using a product for which effects haven’t been thoroughly tested but is interested if it’s profitable.

“You just have to think, ‘Is it going to make me more money than it’s costing me?’,” McGinnis said.

Though some may be against pesticides in favor of organic produce, McGinnis recognizes that it isn’t realistic for the world.

“What the general public doesn’t understand is that if everybody farmed organically, half the world would starve,” McGinnis said. “You just can’t produce the volume (needed) without using the pesticides and insecticides.”

Denlinger said he still has a lot of research to do before it’s ready for use on farms.

“Right now, these hormones we’ve applied by injecting them into the larvae,” Denlinger said. “But we would need to develop further modifications of this chemical so that it could be incorporated into the plant or applied to the plant’s surface so the insect would eat it.”

Dallas Hettinger, a fourth-year in environmental policy and management, sees the positive effects it could have on farms globally.

“We can look at it as a good aspect in the sense that if we control these pests, damage to crops decrease and over all, we have an increase yield to supply to not only the United States, but as a global aspect, to undeveloped countries,” Hettinger said.

However, Hettinger also acknowledges some of the environmental risks.

“If we blow out one chain of the ecosystem, then what are we doing to the detriment to other parts of our ecosystem, including humans?,” Hettinger asked.

If this were to pass all necessary regulations, this chemical could be a lifesaver for many farmers and their businesses.

“Certainly on a worldwide basis, we’re talking billions of dollars of crop loss from these pests,” Denlinger said.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/10/13/new-pesticide-could-save-billions-of-dollars/feed/0Editorial: Obama administration abandons yet another campaign promisehttp://uwire.com/2011/10/13/editorial-obama-administration-abandons-yet-another-campaign-promise/
http://uwire.com/2011/10/13/editorial-obama-administration-abandons-yet-another-campaign-promise/#commentsThu, 13 Oct 2011 18:17:24 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=41803In 2008, then-Senator Barack Obama pledged to install the first-ever pollution limits on smog, widely regarded as a contributor to global warming and health risks. Three years later, now-President Obama has struck down the Environmental Protection Agency’s smog limits, which were once his own proposals. Environmental groups, along with his already disenchanted liberal base, are not so happy, and five of them — including the American Lung Association — are suing his administration for illegally injuring the American people.

The proposed pollution limits would have brought down ozone exposure from 75 to 70 parts per billion. According to the EPA, this seemingly small decrease would have cost around $19 to $25 billion, which is a hefty cost for a government scrambling to find money. However, the agency also calculated that the monetary value of the health benefits would have been as high as $37 billion, more than making up for the costs of the regulations.

President Obama’s reasoning for his action was that it was not a smart move in this economy, politically or economically and that he would reconsider the proposal after further yet necessary scientific studies in 2013. Beside the fact that he may not be president at this time, it seems that we are once again faced with a flip-flop from the commander-in-chief who ran on a green platform.

Environmental jobs are a key to the future trajectory of our economy; it is a whole new sector that can unleash an enormous number of opportunities by replacing the old with the new. We have to make sacrifices to build a sustainable 21st-century economy and, if we have to suffer high costs on the wealthy’s account in the short-term, so be it. It is the long-term we must be looking at.

We have seen negligence from the administration on Keystone XL — the enormous and volatile pipeline running from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico — and this is yet another item to throw on the list of environmental gaffes courtesy of the Obama administration. This is a logical, common sense proposal by the EPA that saves peoples’ lungs and lives, yet somehow the clench of this anti-anything-regulatory stigma that is floating around the Hill is shutting down the hope that this administration seems to be running low on.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/10/13/editorial-obama-administration-abandons-yet-another-campaign-promise/feed/0Professors say XL Pipeline may stall U.S. job creationhttp://uwire.com/2011/10/12/professors-say-xl-pipeline-may-stall-u-s-job-creation/
http://uwire.com/2011/10/12/professors-say-xl-pipeline-may-stall-u-s-job-creation/#commentsWed, 12 Oct 2011 15:49:16 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=41683The creation of the Keystone XL Pipeline may kill more United States jobs than it creates, according to a recent publication from Cornell U’s Global Labor Institute. Their finding contradicts the claims of oil companies that the proposed pipeline — which has been criticized by environmentalists — will spur economic growth.

The construction of the pipeline, which would transport oil from tar sands near Alberta, Canada, to refineries in the Gulf of Mexico, is currently being reviewed by the U.S. Department of State. According to statements by the TransCanada Corporation and the American Petroleum Institute, pipeline construction would spur growth in certain sectors of the United States economy.

But in the Global Labor Institute report, entitled “Pipe Dreams? Jobs Gained, Jobs Lost by the Construction of Keystone XL,” Cornell researchers disagreed with the claim made by TransCanada, the company planning the construction, and supporters of the pipeline that its construction would stimulate the U.S. economy.

“The industry’s claim that [the pipeline] will create 119,000 total jobs … is based on a flawed and poorly documented study commissioned by TransCanada,” the report states. “[The pipeline] will not be a major source of US jobs, nor will it play any substantial role at all in putting Americans back to work.”

The ILR report argues that while the overall budget for the project is $7 billion, the actual budget for U.S. jobs is approximately $3 to $4 billion, since a large portion has already been allocated to material and labor in Canada.

According to TransCanada data supplied to the State Department, the project will create between 2,500 and 4,560 construction jobs in the U.S. An earlier claim from the company stated that 20,000 jobs would be generated.

According to the Global Labor Institute study, most of the steel for the pipeline will be produced in Canada, not in the United States.

Reed Steberger, co-president of KyotoNow!, lauded the study and said that TransCanada is “perpetuating a myth of jobs creation based on inflated and outright false statistics — in other words, on bad math.

“[GLI] has led the way in building labor-environment collations and their study once again shows that union jobs and green jobs are closely tied and form a foundation for economic recovery and American prosperity,” Steberger said in an email. “We really can’t talk about green jobs if we’re not talking about union jobs.”

Some, however, have disputed Cornell’s report, which has been supported by Sean Sweeney, director of the GLI.

“This ‘study’ is deeply flawed … Sweeney points to an existing pipeline in Kansas as evidence that there won’t be much job creation there. In fact, the Keystone XL pipeline will connect with that pipeline. Building that connection will require a great deal of labor and jobs,” Matt Koch, a writer for ChamberPost, the blog of the Chamber of Commerce, wrote in a recent editorial. “Keystone XL requires 29 pump stations, each needing at least 100 workers, and each of the pipeline’s 17 spreads requires at least 500 workers. Apparently math is not a specialty at Cornell.”

Still, the GLI report cites problems with pipeline construction and jobs that fall beyond raw data, including the chance of oil spills. Additionally, the report states that the Keystone XL Pipeline is hindering the transition to a green and sustainable economy.

“The industry has ignored or dismissed fears that KXL will have a serious impact on our environment and our economy through inland spills, spills into freshwater supplies … or increases in greenhouse gas emissions and other forms of pollution,” the report states.

“I looked at what effects clouds have on the overall energy of the planet and found that clouds cannot be causing climate change over the last 10 years,” Dessler said.

Roy Spencer, proclaimed skeptic of climate change and climatologist at U. Alabama-Huntsville, coauthored a paper that was published in July suggesting that clouds were the primary reason for temperature changes in the last decade.

“It is widely accepted in the climatology community that clouds play a very small role in climate change over short periods of time [such as a decade],” Dessler said. “Spencer’s paper suggested that there should be major revisions to climate change theory.”

Less than six weeks after Spencer published his paper, Dessler released his refute. Due to Dessler’s quick response, critics said his refutation is invalid because Dessler’s published his results too quickly. Dessler said he knew about Spencer’s argument as early as last December, and started working on his own version in January.

“When Spencer’s paper came out, I looked at it and adjusted what I had already written,” Dessler said.

Because climate change is communicated as controversial within the media, both Spencer and Dessler received coverage.

“Every month, hundreds of papers come out that are either explicitly or implicitly in agreement with mainstream climate theory that humans are in the driver’s seat of the climate and that future warmings could be really large,” Dessler said. “And those papers don’t get any traction in the media. But then a handful of papers published every year by hard-core skeptics do get a lot of traction because there’s a huge sympathetic media for those papers.”

Dessler said Spencer’s paper received the media attraction because it falls under the category of “hard-core” skepticism.

Fox News picked up the story about Spencer’s paper, addressing the topic on its website.

“Has a central tenant of global warming just collapsed?” the story began, and continued, “the planet isn’t heating up, in other words.”

Dessler said someone needed to refute Spencer’s article because of the media traction it gained.

“It was necessary for me to write my paper because even though no scientists believe Spencer’s work, it was important to get a rebuttal out there so that policy makers wouldn’t be able to trumpet this,” Dessler said.

An article that appeared in Scientific American Magazine in early September compared the scientific validity in Spencer’s and Dessler’s works.

Although both scientists used the same data set, their approaches in data analysis varied, leading to differing outcomes.

Using data collected by a NASA satellite for Earth’s atmospheric and oceanic temperatures from 2000 to 2010, both climatologists calculated whether the atmosphere or the ocean had a more significant effect on the earth’s surface temperatures. They then fit their data to climate models.

“…[Spencer and colleagues] plotted only six [climate] models [from 14 total] and the particular observational data set that provided maximum support for their hypothesis. Plotting all of the models and all of the data provided a much different conclusion,” Dessler stated in his paper, which was published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters on Oct. 1.

Dessler went on to show that it was ocean heat, from the El Niño/La Niña-Southern Oscillations, that influenced temperature evolution for the last decade, and that the ocean is 20 times more influential on climate change than clouds.

These oscillations represent cyclical changes in the southern Pacific Ocean’s surface temperatures that occur approximately every five years. El Niño means the warming of the water’s surface, and La Niña means the cooling.

Although Dessler said he believes Spencer’s paper holds no significance in the climatology community, he wrote his own as an outreach to ensure that the public does not get the wrong idea about climate change.

“Someone who is not in the trenches of this research could get the wrong idea,” Dessler said.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/10/11/professor-refutes-claim-that-clouds-cause-global-warming/feed/0Column: Drilling it inhttp://uwire.com/2011/10/10/column-drilling-it-in/
http://uwire.com/2011/10/10/column-drilling-it-in/#commentsMon, 10 Oct 2011 15:36:39 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=38715Since 1981, a moratorium against offshore oil drilling has been renewed by every Congress. There has been almost constant debate and concern over the moratorium in recent years as direct result of rising gas (petroleum) prices and political pressure by (mostly) Republican politicians from oil-rich states. Proponents often argue that offshore drilling is an important element of the potential economic health and national security of the United States and can be accomplished with minimal environmental impact. Those in favor of maintaining the moratorium argue that offshore drilling ignores more fundamental problems such as unsustainable levels and growth of American energy consumption, rising gas prices or decreasing energy-independence and is most importantly not worth the environmental risk.

In March 2010, the debate intensified when President Obama agreed that allowing some offshore drilling could be part of his administration’s energy bill. This was a compromise to gain votes for a cap-and-trade mechanism that would limit greenhouse gas emissions. Before the energy bill ever came to a vote in the Senate, an explosion in April 2010 caused a massive oil leak from a BP-operated deep-water oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. For four months innumerable gallons of oil leaked into the Gulf. It inflicted massive environmental damage and economic harm upon U.S. Gulf states.

Members of the Princeton community fall out on both sides of this issue, in very meaningful ways. Princeton students including Eleanor Elbert have been working to spread the message of offshore drilling’s negative impacts. Elbert spent her time researching the environmental, legal and economic impacts of offshore drilling. She led a team of nongovernmental organizations to Belize to “raise awareness of the issue and call on the government to ban offshore drilling.” On the other end of the spectrum, Robert Saltiel was appointed president and chief operating officer of the international offshore drilling contractor — Atwood Oceanics — and took the reins on Dec. 15, 2009. These very different efforts remind us that Princeton has a tremendous ability to impact the world and its events.

There are very poignant arguments that have caused me to question the viability of lifting the offshore drilling moratorium. The Energy Information Administration claims that offshore drilling could, in time, supply 18 billion barrels of crude oil. This increased production could lower gas prices for American consumers. On the other hand, oil prices are largely set by worldwide supply and demand; recent rises in prices reflect increasing energy use in rapidly growing economies such as China. The oil generated from offshore drilling in the United States may not impact world oil markets in any significant way. Furthermore, oil exploration and rig construction take years to complete — according to the EIA, offshore drilling would not produce any change in oil prices until 2030.

But the debate is not confined either to issues environmental protection or the economy — national security is pertinent as well. Currently, the United States must buy much of its oil from authoritarian and often unfriendly states such as Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Iran, or from unstable places like Nigeria. The oil estimated to exist in untapped offshore reserves could help distance America from anti-democratic regimes by decreasing their importance to the U.S. economy. However, as America only has 3 percent of the globe’s oil reserves and it consumes 25 percent of the international oil supply, the United States will have to continue buying oil from hostile nations.

The cost of oil is placing a serious strain on the American economy and on household budgets, and available methods should be used to combat the problem. Perhaps offshore drilling is a small, necessary part of a broader energy strategy, including energy-usage consciousness and greater usage of renewable energy sources. However, offshore drilling is a “Band-Aid” solution: Opening America’s coastal waters to offshore drilling does not address the underlying problems of underutilization of greener resources and general overconsumption.

Also, the environmental consequences of offshore drilling may not be worth the potential financial gain. The Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010 showed, and continues to show, how devastating a massive oil leak can be. Fish, marine mammals and seabirds were killed in droves by a slick extending across hundreds of square miles. As the oil reached the shore it destroyed valuable coastal wetlands and beaches, harming the animals that rely on these habitats. Even without catastrophic failure, oil rigs release toxic chemicals into the surrounding waters, transporting oil from these rigs is harmful, seismic waves disorientate sea-animals; and installing rigs erodes the ocean floor, which worsens the impact of hurricanes and tropical storms.

Apart from the terrible environmental damage caused by the Gulf spill, the economic costs have also been grievous. Fishing and tourism are the economic mainstays of coastal communities and both can be damaged by a major oil spill, causing considerable unemployment. BP has promised to compensate those directly affected by the loss of coastal jobs in this instance, but what if BP, or a future polluter, were unable to pay? Shutting down coastal industries has effects on suppliers, retailers, transport firms, etc., which damages the wider economy.

Regulation might never be able to remove the risk from the dangerous enterprise of offshore drilling. The only path to true energy independence and greater national security is to decrease American energy consumption and to invest in homegrown renewable energy.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/10/10/column-drilling-it-in/feed/0Column: The World Trade Organization’s silent victimshttp://uwire.com/2011/10/05/column-the-world-trade-organization%e2%80%99s-silent-victims/
http://uwire.com/2011/10/05/column-the-world-trade-organization%e2%80%99s-silent-victims/#commentsWed, 05 Oct 2011 15:41:51 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=30970Unbeknownst to many, the World Trade Organization has increasingly attacked U.S. consumer and environmental policies. In the past month, the WTO has ruled that both dolphin-safe tuna labels and the U.S. Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act are, in fact, in violation of the organization’s rules.

If the U.S. refuses to abandon or revise these policies, it could face trade sanctions from the WTO.

For those of you that may be unfamiliar with dolphin-safe tuna labels, these are found on tuna products that were caught through fishing methods known to reduce dolphin bycatch. The dolphin-safe tuna labeling campaign has been largely successful in the U.S., with consumers preferring tuna caught using these methods. However, the WTO has declared that the labels violate the WTO’s Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade, calling it an “unnecessary obstacle to international trade.” Spearheading this movement was Mexico, who believed the policy created an unfair advantage for those who receive a dolphin-safe label. Mexico has failed to meet the standards to receive the label, as their tuna corporations often use unsatisfactory fishing methods, and has sought to relax dolphin-safe tuna standards in the past.

The U.S. Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act was also found to be in violation of the same agreement. In an effort to reduce teenage smoking, the FSPTCA banned candy and clove cigarettes in 2009. Extensive research has shown that teenagers more commonly use these, which are often marketed as “starter cigarettes.” Pushing this particular agenda was Indonesia, where clove cigarettes are a substantial export.

These are two blaring examples of the WTO placing corporate interests ahead of public interest. Are corporate profits more important than the positive effects derived from these consumer and environmental policies? Apparently, to the WTO, profits are more significant than saving dolphins and preventing teenagers from developing an unhealthy addiction.

Viewing these progressive policies (which have been popular with the public) as “barriers to trade” is the WTO’s first mistake. While reducing barriers to trade can achieve economic growth, mislabeling these policies “barriers” will cost society more than it could hope to gain. Consumers (and of course dolphins) lose with the elimination of dolphin-safe tuna labels, as consumer preferences have shown that it is clearly an important issue to many.

In the tobacco case, public health will ultimately suffer the greatest loss. Further addiction could place an additional monetary strain on the health care system.

Neither of these policies is considered to be particularly stringent market regulation. Both are fairly soft regulatory approaches, which have typically been safe from WTO attacks. Neither policy seeks to discriminate against foreign trade, nor do they seek to promote domestic producers. Therefore, neither should even be open to attack from a trade organization; they are domestic policies. Instead, the WTO has chosen to assert its influence over American policy decisions, while placing corporate profits ahead of the interests of the people.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/10/05/column-the-world-trade-organization%e2%80%99s-silent-victims/feed/0Column: So long, Solyndrahttp://uwire.com/2011/10/04/column-so-long-solyndra/
http://uwire.com/2011/10/04/column-so-long-solyndra/#commentsTue, 04 Oct 2011 15:24:45 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=29131I was back in my native Bay Area last summer, driving north on I-880, the first time I saw it. Shortly after passing the Dixon Landing Road exit, I noticed on my right a huge building that hadn’t previously caught my attention. It was a spectacular site at night — its sharp white walls accented with dark blue, dramatically lit by the floodlights of the round-the-clock construction effort. Huge glass windows revealed its clean, metallic infrastructure. Though not yet completed, the building already conveyed a sense of modernity and grandeur. I wasn’t yet sure what the purpose of the building was, but I distinctly remember thinking: “This is what the future looks like.”

As it turns out, I wasn’t exactly right. The building belonged to a company by the name of Solyndra, a solar technology manufacturer that produced arrays comprised of cylindrical (as opposed to flat) solar panels. And while that building may have been the factory of the future, it certainly won’t be the factory of their future. On Aug. 31, less than a year after opening the plant, Solyndra ceased all operations, laid off all 1,100 workers and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. That same stunning factory now lies dormant.

The sudden downfall of any sizeable company is likely to make the news cycle, but Solyndra’s descent was particularly noteworthy. Here’s why: In addition to nearly $1 billion in private equity, Solyndra’s growth was aided by a $535 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy — the first of its kind. The Obama administration had staked a significant amount of political capital on Solyndra’s success. Vice President Biden was present at the company’s groundbreaking ceremony, and President Obama also delivered a speech there about Solyndra’s growth potential. In many ways, Solyndra had been the poster child of the administration’s efforts to create green jobs.

The company’s rapid death therefore amounted to a bit more than a large omelet’s worth of proverbial egg-in-face (green eggs?) for the Obama administration. What’s more, investigations into what’s now been dubbed the “Solyndra Scandal” revealed that members of the administration ignored warnings of the company’s pending insolvency, which resulted from internal mismanagement as well as a rapid decline in the price of silicon, a key ingredient in the products of their competitors.

Solyndra wasn’t just unprofitable; it was hemorrhaging money. While the price of Solyndra’s panels was hovering at more than $3/watt, a number of competitors (particularly Chinese companies, who were more heavily subsidized by the their government) were able to produce conventional or thin-film solar arrays for significantly less. But Solyndra’s underperforming sales didn’t stop its extravagant spending. Remember that factory that so strongly captured my attention? It cost an equally stunning $733 million to build. So while Solyndra’s failure was breaking news for some, others had predicted it for some time.

If Solyndra had gone under with only private investments at stake, its presence in the media spotlight may have been short. But the federal government’s involvement in its funding has turned Solyndra into yet another talking point in the ideological battle over the role of government in the American economy. Hardly anyone — left or right — disagrees that the decision to fund Solyndra was a poor one; hindsight is 20/20, after all. But many conservatives have taken the argument a step further, concluding that Solyndra’s outcome provides clear evidence that the government should never use taxpayer dollars to take sides in the market.

Fine — but let’s take this argument to its logical extension. If Solyndra’s failure is indeed evidence for why the government should resist investing in particular companies or industries — let’s even say just energy companies — I would hope that this standard be applied equally. Unfortunately, it very clearly is not.

A little perspective can be helpful here. The $535 million lost in Solyndra is no chump change, to be sure. But it’s hardly a drop in the bucket relative to the money injected into oil, gas and coal companies annually in the form of special tax and regulatory exemptions — exemptions, bear in mind, that Republicans recently unequivocally refused to repeal. This sort of special dispensation, which occurs on a far grander scale than the whole Solyndra debacle, has kept prices for “dirty” energy artificially low, making it even more difficult for alternative energy companies to enter the market organically and remain competitive. How ironic, then, that government payments to one industry almost necessitate government payments to another.

And could there possibly be a more heinous example of industry cronyism than that enjoyed by oil, gas and coal companies? How curious that the same folks who are most vociferous with respect to the Solyndra scandal seem to be awfully quiet about the nearly non-existent oversight for conventional energy corporations. If we are really to be critical of energy companies gaining insider relationships with the bodies that should theoretically be governing them, why is there not more outcry over thewell-documented rampant corruption of the Mineral Management Service, the entity responsible for regulating oil extraction on public lands? And this is to say nothing of the tens of millions collectively spent by the oil, gas and coal industries in lobbying the federal government to maintain their sacred cow status. In short, if the government is wrong in taking a position in the energy markets, solar is hardly the largest beneficiary.

Solyndra’s bankruptcy clearly demands that the government re-examine its approach to investing in clean energy. But to those who would use this example to conclude that the government shouldn’t take sides in energy policy, I say this: Get real, or at least be consistent.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/10/04/column-so-long-solyndra/feed/0Plans for new underground park begin to take shape in New Yorkhttp://uwire.com/2011/09/30/plans-for-new-underground-park-begin-to-take-shape-in-new-york/
http://uwire.com/2011/09/30/plans-for-new-underground-park-begin-to-take-shape-in-new-york/#commentsFri, 30 Sep 2011 15:41:01 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=26666In a city of skyscrapers, cabs and closet-sized apartments, New Yorkers might soon be able to find their open green space underground.

Entrepreneurs Dan Barasch, R. Boykin Curry IV and James Ramsey are working to build a community green space the size of Gramercy Park below ground. The high-tech, subterranean park called the Delancey Underground is intended to replace a two-acre abandoned trolley terminal beneath the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge.

The developers plan to use advanced technology to channel sunlight underground and enable vegetation and plant life to grow.

“The concept that we might be able to create green space in some incredibly congested neighborhoods, in square footage no one really knew even existed, was something super compelling to us,” said James Ramsey, architect and co-founder of the Delancey Underground Project. “Add to that the coupling of an incredibly cool blend of cutting edge design and urban archeology, and you have a concept that we are quite literally prepared to devote our lives to.”

While the project is only in its preliminary stages and no official date of completion has been released, the developers have been working closely with New York City Community Boards and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

The project will run in tandem with plans for the adjacent Seward Park Urban Renewal Area, a large-scale urban renewal project to develop new properties between Delancey and Grand streets with a concentration on lower-income housing.

According to Ramsey, funding for Delancey will be from a variety of models, from special types of loans or private, tax-deductible donations, to federal tax credits. The total cost and completion date for the project have not been determined.

However, despite the creators’ enthusiasm for the project, the Delancey group is facing a number of issues that need to be addressed.

On the other hand, Louise Harpman, clinical associate professor of global design at NYU, believes the Delancey Underground is a laudable endeavor.

“The designers take something that is forlorn and overlooked and make it a destination,” she said.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/09/30/plans-for-new-underground-park-begin-to-take-shape-in-new-york/feed/0Developed countries get poor marks on climate change aid reporthttp://uwire.com/2011/09/30/developed-countries-get-poor-marks-on-climate-change-aid-report/
http://uwire.com/2011/09/30/developed-countries-get-poor-marks-on-climate-change-aid-report/#commentsFri, 30 Sep 2011 14:06:04 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=26637Of the $30 billion promised to developing nations by developed nations to combat climate change at the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, only $7 billion has definitely been given, according to research compiled for a September report on countries’ transparency levels in committing the funds.

Developed nations have reported the $7 billion, but “there’s no way to assess how much money they have actually given,” said David Ciplet GS, who co-authored the report with Timmons Roberts, director of the Center for Environmental Studies and professor of environmental studies and sociology.

A more transparent system would allow developed countries to see that others are also meeting their promises, reassure tax-payers that governments are not wasting money and allow researchers to measure what effect, if any, these efforts have on combating climate change.

According to the Copenhagen Accord, developed nations have until 2012 to fulfill their commitment to developing nations. Looking back at past international aid agreements, “there’s a history of these broken promises,” Roberts said.

The authors of the report graded each country based on the information they provided regarding their programs and the results are grim. The highest overall score was Norway’s 52 percent transparency, the United States tied for fifth with Switzerland at 32 percent, and New Zealand performed the worst with 26 percent.

The grading system “set the bar pretty high,” Roberts said, because the authors want developed nations “to do a lot better.”

By 2020, the UN hopes that developed countries will be contributing $100 billion per year to developing nations. Without more oversight and transparency, that goal will be increasingly difficult to achieve, Ciplet said.

A major problem with the lack of transparency, Roberts said, is that developed countries are taking money from other international aid commitments and diverting it into this program. Diverted money does not count as new, and therefore by the standards of the Copenhagen Accord cannot be considered part of the pledged $30 billion. Most countries did not report a mechanism for distinguishing between new and diverted funding, according to the report.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/09/30/developed-countries-get-poor-marks-on-climate-change-aid-report/feed/0Species displaced by climate change face unexpected obstacleshttp://uwire.com/2011/09/30/species-displaced-by-climate-change-face-unexpected-obstacles/
http://uwire.com/2011/09/30/species-displaced-by-climate-change-face-unexpected-obstacles/#commentsFri, 30 Sep 2011 14:04:51 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=26635As climate change affects many animals’ habitats, conservationists, environmentalists and scientists are becoming increasingly concerned about their ability to survive environmental disruptions. In a yearlong study that began in early 2009, Dov Sax, Brown U. assistant professor of biology, found unexpected obstacles to the migration paths 15 amphibian species are likely to take as climate change worsens.

Sax conducted the research with Regan Early, now a post-doctoral fellow at U. Evora in Portugal. Their article, “Analysis of climate paths reveals potential limitations on species range shifts,” states that climate change will force many species to seek out new homes as their original environments become increasingly unsuitable to their survival.

To study these organisms’ ability to make the transition, Sax and Early constructed a “climate path” for each species of amphibians. This projected migrational route predicts where each amphibian would travel over the next few decades and when it would inhabit a particular area.

Sax and Early constructed these climate paths using a variety of models, including climate models that predict how an environment is going to change over time and climate niche models, which examine the current habitats of a species to determine “the set of conditions it can tolerate,” Sax said.

Originally, Sax and Early “expected to find that cities and large areas of human impact on the landscape would stop species from shifting their ranges,” but during their initial research, they began looking more closely at natural “gaps” as a major obstruction to these climate paths, Early said. These “gaps” are areas of climatic instability that a species is projected to travel through.

“Once we discovered this effect, we realized that it was so important because it was so fundamental and would be affecting species all over the world. We decided to stop studying the effects of cities and human impact on the landscape and focus on this much more fundamental question,” Early said.

“Instead of getting steadily warmer, climate might get a few degrees warmer and then one degree cooler. Because it is always getting warmer and cooler, species will move into the areas when it gets warmer, but then they will disappear from that area when it gets cooler again. So it’s like taking two steps forward but one step back,” Early said.

Sax and Early also found that both a species’ persistence and its “dispersal-ability” positively correlated with its capacity to migrate successfully down its “climate path.” According to the article, persistence is a species’ capacity to withstand “short-term unfavorable climate conditions.” Dispersal-ability is the distance an organism can travel from its niche.

This is the first time that “the importance of persistence under short-term unfavorable climate conditions has been quantified,” according to the article. Due to the lack of existing information in this area, more research must be done to understand various species’ persistence-levels, Sax said.

Sax and Early both said they consider their research a precursor to possible future areas of study related to climatic gaps, persistence and dispersal abilities.

“We have the technology now to be able to map the climate paths that species will move along from where they live now to where they can live in the future. So we’re suggesting that people should do this a lot more widely and start to become much more aware of the actual processes that will help species move or not,” Early said.

The study also has many implications for animal conservationists. Currently, habitat corridors — which are set up to ensure that the land between two different niches is traversable for migrating species — are among the most common methods of helping animals move from one environment to another.

But Sax said he believes climate gaps will reduce the effectiveness of habitat corridors.

“I think what our work shows is that (habitat corridors) won’t work well for as many species as was originally thought. So it’s not going to be as powerful as a strategy as people had hoped,” Sax said.

One alternative that Sax and Early considered is the heavily debated “managed relocation” option, where humans transport species from one location to another.

There is concern that managed relocation may contribute to the growth of invasive species, Early said. Despite this, Sax said he sees it as a viable option for the future.

“If we want to have populations that live in the wild, then (managed relocation) is going to be our only option for some species,” Sax said.

Currently, Sax is leading a working group of roughly 35 lawyers, politicians, activists and researchers who are examining the scientific, ethical, economic and legal issues related to managed relocation. He said he expects to finish his work with the group within a year, possibly producing results that will help the general public come to a greater consensus on the topic.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/09/30/species-displaced-by-climate-change-face-unexpected-obstacles/feed/0Column: Free-market capitalism for green energyhttp://uwire.com/2011/09/29/column-free-market-capitalism-for-green-energy/
http://uwire.com/2011/09/29/column-free-market-capitalism-for-green-energy/#commentsThu, 29 Sep 2011 18:53:59 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=26622The recent collapse of solar-panel manufacturer Solyndra is an example of why politics and business don’t mix. The company’s loss of over $500 million in federal loans came as no surprise to auditors or analysts who had been over its financials within the past two years. The White House staff was blinded by lobbyists, and this failure comes as a slap in the face.

In theory, investing in renewable energy manufactured by an American company was getting at the root of two of our biggest problems: energy independence and job outsourcing. With China dominating the global market for solar panels, here was an American company that could both create jobs and turn a profit. And as conflict over foreign oil remains a matter of national security, the harnessing of solar energy on our own turf holds plenty of appeal. Good intentions could only carry the Obama Administration so far, however.

Government intervention in green energy falls under the controversial category of “industrial policy.” According to an August 2010 article in The Economist, industrial policy is the attempt by government to promote the growth of particular industrial sectors and companies. President Obama’s 2009 stimulus package set aside billions of dollars to accomplish this in the field of green energy. The $535 million loan to Solyndra was one example of this massive industrial policy effort. But like any investment into a new, fast-growing, and competitive field, there was a high degree of risk involved. It’s one thing for a venture capital firm to make no return on a big investment, but it’s quite another for the government to do the same with taxpayer money.

So what really went so wrong for Solyndra? In a nutshell, the company’s innovative solar panels had only one major competitive advantage: they didn’t require silicone as a raw material. The majority of solar-energy components in the global market require silicone, and in recent years, the price of high-grade silicone has been as high as $1,000 a pound. But in 2009, silicone prices dropped drastically to less than $100 a pound, and combining this change with cutthroat competition from heavily subsidized Chinese solar panel manufacturers was a death sentence for Solyndra. The company never broke even.

On a fundamental level, our government isn’t structurally equipped to make business gambles. Its bureaucratic nature of laborious decision-making and lethargic reaction time is no match for rapidly changing industrial markets. In the case of Solyndra, the Obama Administration was fully aware that for the company to be profitable, the price of silicone would have to remain high. But, according to an article in The New York Times, “industry experts outside the federal government, going back to 2008, were predicting silicon prices were headed for a steep fall.” It is no secret that industries built upon new technologies and ideas are bound to be the riskiest and most volatile.

Now, let me be clear: I don’t believe the government was wrong in wanting to help a U.S.-based solar energy company. In this case, they just went about it the wrong way. Instead of making a business loan, the Obama Administration could have provided subsidies around the cost of goods to encourage initial growth. It could have granted tax relief in the event of profits earned in Solyndra’s manufacture of solar solutions. It could have been a primary buyer of the product. By taking on the role of a supportive observer, the government could have greatly minimized its own risk. The private sector should remain the primary source of funding for innovative but uncertain business ventures.

It’s important to remember that the renewable energy industry is alive and growing. I believe that the free market system can do more for this field than any government initiative. Of course, globalized free-market capitalism as it stands today certainly can’t be called a friend of the environment. Resource exploitation in developing countries and a “race to the bottom” mentality gives a history of evidence to the contrary. Nevertheless, the market adapts to changes in demand and technology, and renewable energy is taking off in both respects. Governments have an important role to play, but they should be more preoccupied with regulating unsustainable industries than with making risky investments. In the case of Solyndra, the Obama Administration missed the blatant warning signs of trouble, and is now paying for this mishap in severe public criticism. “High risk, high reward” investments are for thrill-seekers in the private sector, not idealistic politicians.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/09/29/column-free-market-capitalism-for-green-energy/feed/0UCLA researchers combine techniques into new technology to create drinking water from the seahttp://uwire.com/2011/09/29/ucla-researchers-combine-techniques-into-new-technology-to-create-drinking-water-from-the-sea/
http://uwire.com/2011/09/29/ucla-researchers-combine-techniques-into-new-technology-to-create-drinking-water-from-the-sea/#commentsThu, 29 Sep 2011 15:05:13 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=26586Sitting on Yoram Cohen’s desk is a bottle filled with water that once belonged in the ocean.

“It tastes great,” said Cohen, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science. “It’s the best-tasting water ever.”

He said it with a chuckle. That water bottle, however, represents years of research by Cohen and his colleagues in transforming dirty, salty or otherwise contaminated water into a drinkable liquid.

The team has developed technology called compact modular reverse osmosis technology. The system combines two water technology techniques, ultrafiltration and secondary reverse osmosis, to create 18,000 gallons of drinking water from the sea per day. That amount of water is roughly enough to provide for the population of UCLA, Cohen said.

Still in testing, the system could ultimately allow Southern California to reduce its reliance on imported water, Cohen said. He said the system is in some ways cheaper than bottled water, as it may cost only $1.50 for 1,000 liters of water, compared to $3 for 1 liter of bottled water.

Cohen said he is planning to work with the UCLA cogeneration plant to develop a similar system that would decrease water waste and increase water availability on campus.

During the past two years, the team has pushed to move its work from the laboratory to real-life applications, Cohen said. The second generation of the technology is currently being tested in coordination with the U.S. Navy to turn sea water into drinkable water.

When he arrived at UCLA 20 years ago, Cohen’s office was one door away from the faculty who revolutionized water technology in the 1960s by creating the first reverse osmosis membranes for desalination, he said.

The experience of working one door away from these scientists influenced his research, but Cohen said the push to get involved in this area of study did not occur until California began experiencing more global climate change and water problems.

They are also working to create a simplified, commercial model of the water cleaning technology that will work with various salinity levels and needs, said Larry Gao, a second-year UCLA chemical engineering graduate student in charge of the electrical aspects of the project. The system will be tested in the San Joaquin Valley.

“The most rewarding aspect (of the project) is that all this theoretical work has found its way into application,” said Panagiotis Christofides, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the UCLA School of Engineering.

Christofides is responsible for the development of the controls to ensure the system can function without much oversight.

Cohen gave high praise to the students involved in the project. The work is an opportunity for practical application of research, said postdoctoral student Andi Rahardianto.

“It’s very rewarding and very rare when you get this opportunity where what you do in the lab works in the field and people can see it,” Rahardianto said.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/09/29/ucla-researchers-combine-techniques-into-new-technology-to-create-drinking-water-from-the-sea/feed/0Harvard professor designing air-capture planthttp://uwire.com/2011/09/26/harvard-professor-designing-air-capture-plant/
http://uwire.com/2011/09/26/harvard-professor-designing-air-capture-plant/#commentsMon, 26 Sep 2011 15:08:49 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=26421Harvard U. professor David W. Keith is working furiously to beat the winter weather. His company, Carbon Engineering, is designing a device to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by air capture, and the prototype wasn’t built to withstand the winter cold.

The team is currently testing a device called a contactor, a central element to the machine that collects carbon dioxide, at U. Calgary.

Keith, a professor of applied physics at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences as well as a professor of public policy at the Kennedy School, said work has fallen behind schedule. But the group remains optimistic about its innovation’s potential to manage carbon buildup in the atmosphere.

Carbon Engineering’s goal is to have a commercially viable technology by 2016. A typical plant would capture one million tons of carbon dioxide per year—the equivalent of taking about 300,000 cars off the road, according to the company’s website.

Keith’s machine involves capturing air and holding it inside the contactor, where a chemical solution absorbs carbon dioxide. The machine then creates pure carbon dioxide, which can then be put to productive use.

Carbon Engineering is not the first to build a machine to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but Keith’s group is working on a larger scale, he said. Keith—who was named a Hero of the Environment by Time Magazine in 2009—also said that his group was focused from the beginning on the economic viability of its technology.

“There were commercial air-capture devices in the 1950s and 1960s so the basic feasibility of doing this commercially was already established,” Keith said. “We are different because we are trying to think of how to do this in a way that is really cheap.”

Keith said that despite growth in the industry, many are still skeptical of the technology.

“There is a great deal of resistance to the idea that it could be useful to do this,” Keith said. “One of the biggest challenges for Carbon Engineering is getting over this hump. We do believe that there is something real here and we have lots of engineering to show it.”

The ideas behind Carbon Engineering can be traced back to Keith’s work at Carnegie Mellon.

His initial academic analysis eventually led to practical research in the field, he said. When Keith moved to the University of Calgary—where he serves as an adjunct professor—he found the group of individuals who would eventual compose the founding members of Carbon Engineering. Keith created the company in 2009 with funding from prominent individuals, including Bill Gates.

Keith said he is now eager to complete testing and proceed with building the world’s first air capture plant.

“I think it is really important to get this thing out in the real world because only when you do that can you really get a sense of what it will cost and how useful it will be,” he said.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/09/26/harvard-professor-designing-air-capture-plant/feed/0An oceanic quest to find the trash-soup truthhttp://uwire.com/2011/09/23/an-oceanic-quest-to-find-the-trash-soup-truth/
http://uwire.com/2011/09/23/an-oceanic-quest-to-find-the-trash-soup-truth/#commentsFri, 23 Sep 2011 19:24:48 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=26390Tales of the high seas often seem fantastic. But today, researchers and explorers are in search of a real monster of the deep – one of our own making.

Tim Silverwood, Australian environmentalist, filmmaker and photographer, embarked on a Hawai‘i-to-Vancouver trip to find the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

In an email interview, Silverwood explained the history he’s had with environmental degradation of the ocean. “[I] started to understand the impacts our discarded waste could have on the wildlife in the ocean. I started to collect litter off beaches whenever I was there and become genuinely concerned about the amount of trash entering the sea. When I traveled to Indonesia and India in 2007, I witnessed that the problem was global and that so much human consumer plastic waste was entering the ocean. When I came back to Australia, I decided to organize beach cleanups in my area, which led me to collaborating with two local ladies and forming the organization Take 3–A Clean Beach Initiative.”

The Take 3 program involves everyone willing to help. People participate by picking up three pieces of trash or debris whenever they visit the beach.

For his most recent adventure, Silverwood and a team of artists, filmmakers, environmentalists, divers, and Ph.D. students set sail from Honolulu in early July for a three-week expedition searching for the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre.

The research was led by Marcus Eriksen, director of research and education with Algalita Marine Research Foundation and co-founder of the 5 Gyres Institute. Oceanographer Nikolai Maximenko of the International Pacific Research Centre at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa developed the route using a computer model.

It is a myth that there are floating islands of trash on the Pacific surface. Silverwood described the state of the piles as being more like soup, because the trash doesn’t always float. Instead, some descends into the water column, making clean up more difficult.

“We need to accept that we can no longer treat the ocean like a dumping ground and not expect it to react. We have abused this vast resource for too long, and I really think it’s time for us to start giving a little bit back,” said Silverwood.

The North Pacific Gyre’s “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” has been described as close to twice the size of the United States, but on this voyage the object of study was a more compact gyre, closer to the size of Texas.

IMPACT ON HAWAI‘I

Because Hawai‘i is surrounded by ocean, it is particularly affected by ocean debris. “Once in a while, a part of the garbage patch starts moving towards Hawai‘i, and some of its plastic ends up on windward Hawaiian beaches. … Ultimately, Hawai‘i is then the final destination of all floating marine debris in the North Pacific,” said Jan Hafner, a collaborator of Maximenko who works for the IPRC.

Debris like rope and old fish cages wash up on Hawai‘i beaches after floating for years. An article by Silverwood featured on ABC Science’s website describes a cleanup on Kamilo Beach on the southern tip of the Big Island.

“Nothing could have prepared me for my first encounter with Kamilo Beach. I had my video camera out and was excitedly filming the beach when suddenly I stopped and truly digested what I was witnessing. The presence of the plastic sand [plastic particles] was horrific,” explained Silverwood.

He continued, “To think that Kamilo is just one of many beaches in the Hawaiian Island chain experiencing this constant barrage is terrifying.”

“It is impossible to stop production and use of plastic, what we all can do is just to better manage its use and disposal,” wrote Hafner in an email.

“I encourage everyone to re-think their relationship with plastic – especially single-use disposable items that we can easily do without,” said Silverwood. “We’ve been fed this idea that we can use as much plastic as we want and just throw it away because it’s disposable. Especially in Hawai‘i, this is a terrible attitude to have.”

The University and Duke Energy have collaborated to create a technology that extracts methane from hog waste and creates electricity while reducing carbon emissions. The $1.2 million project was conceived three years ago by Duke and Duke Energy, though ground did not break on the project until Sept. 2010.

Google expressed interest in funding the project in return for a portion of the carbon offsets credits in June, said Tatjana Vujic, director of the University’s Carbon Offsets Initiative. Companies buy carbon credits to offset their emissions and limit their overall environmental footprint.

In the next 10 years, Duke and Duke Energy will continue running the project on Loyd Ray Farms in Yadkinville, N.C., and share operating and maintenance costs, Vujic said. Google will be splitting the University’s portion in exchange for a share of the carbon offsets for five years.

“In buying carbon offsets, we look for projects with the greatest possible impact,” Jolanka Nickerman, program manager of Google’s Carbon Offsets Team, wrote in an email Tuesday. “The potential impact of this project is large—it has the opportunity to scale to the thousands of farms in North Carolina and the U.S. and potentially the world. That would result in dramatic emission reductions.”

The exchange of funding for carbon credits is a proportional cost-sharing arrangement, Vujic said, noting that the technology will soon be demonstrated on a commercial scale. Of the carbon credits that the project produces, Google will receive the same percentage of funding that they contribute.

The carbon-recapture system is reduces emissions by about 5,000 metric tons per year and helps farms manage waste and promote on-farm renewable energy. The technology uses a two-million gallon anaerobic digester to isolate methane from the waste, converting it into electricity using a heated micro-turbine.

“This is not ivory tower policy but concrete evidence that this technology can work and pay off for farmers, the community and the climate,” Nickerman said.

Professor of engineering Marc Deshusses is in charge of the technical evaluation of the project and will be monitoring it during the next 10 years.

“Farmers will generate revenues from electricity savings and sales, the sales of Renewable Energy Certificates, carbon offsets, new cash crops replacing sprayfields and possibly improved animal health,” Deshusses wrote in an email Tuesday. “This is an important development and opportunity.”

The carbon offset credits the system produces are helping the University and Duke Energy reach their goal of carbon neutrality—one motivation for the project. The University hopes to be carbon-neutral by 2024.

Gus Simmons, director of engineering at Cavanaugh & Associates—an environmental engineering firm—was the principal designer of the project. Simmons said for every ton of methane converted to carbon dioxide there is a 21-fold reduction in greenhouse gas emissions—a benefit to the environment that also has a positive impact on the farm itself.

“Because we’re generating electricity, [the farmer] receives the energy that’s produced in excess of what the project consumes, resulting in cost savings,” Simmons said. “We want to make good economic sense as well as good environmental sense for the farmer.”

One of the best parts of the project was working with the 70-year-old farm owner, Simmons said, adding that the owner embraced the technology well beyond Simmons’ expectations.

“It’s really pretty forward-thinking of Duke University to be doing this,” said Vujic. “I’m really proud of Duke for its leadership, and we’re seeing some great results.”

One of the chief reasons I voted for Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election was because of his promise to take positive action for the environment. I was absolutely giddy about the prospect of a presidential candidate who was willing to stand up to Big Oil, dirty coal and a whole slew of other environmentally degrading groups — a candidate who assured many concerned people like myself that the plight of the environment would not fall on deaf ears. Especially considering former President Bush’s “eight-year pattern of delay in attacking the creeping, but momentous, climate problem,” as The New York Times put it, Obama’s presence as a candidate was a refreshing one.

President Obama started out strong by promising to pass comprehensive climate legislation such as cap and trade — an idea first implemented in the 1990 Clean Air Act — to set limits on greenhouse gas pollution. There were other advances too, such as the establishment of more stringent gas mileage standards and also the setting of emission limits for mercury, the toxic metal produced as a by-product of power plant operations. And who can forget the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, which occurred in April 2010? Throughout and upon the conclusion of the disaster, Obama continued to prove his willingness to stand up for the environment by first attempting to issue a six-month moratorium on drilling in the Gulf — though it was later shortened — and later by establishing more stringent safety requirements for oil companies undertaking future domestic drilling projects.

I admired the courage and initiative Obama displayed in combatting and demanding retribution from Big Oil, an extremely powerful entity in this country. Even as recently as March 2011, the Obama administration held firm on its belief that global warming is a reality, and as a result it denied requests for domestic offshore drilling projects. The idea was that the United States would wean itself off its fossil fuel dependence and invest more time, energy and money into renewable energy sources. Possessing rare oratory powers and quite a lot of gusto, Obama seemed the man of the hour.

Unfortunately, we since have seen the steady decline of Obama’s once solid political stance on those issues about which he proclaimed to care so much. This has been the result of constant pressure from powerful industries and his political opponents. Most recently, Obama caved into GOP and big industry demands to take a new clean air regulation off the table that was aimed at reducing harmful smog buildup and health costs attributed to smog. Republicans balked at the new regulation, labeling it as a “job-killer” because of the EPA’s estimate that it would cost around $90 billion a year. This is despite the fact that it supports a public health standard.

When did Obama start relinquishing his beliefs? The November congressional election of 2010, which may lend an explanation, marked a new shift in political power and party dominance. The Republicans won the House while Democrats maintained the Senate. Republicans now had more power to affect legislation and exert more partisan pressure.

Let us not forget the economic downturn either, which began in December 2007 and has had lingering effects such as high joblessness and low growth that have provided the Republican Party ammunition to hurl at the White House. Republicans have used the country’s precarious economic position to cast doubt on Obama’s effectiveness as a president.

The American people began to lose faith in the man who made thousands head to the streets to celebrate his victory on election night. One can surmise fairly confidently that the state of the economy has hurt Obama severely and continues to cast a shadow on his presidency. As recently as Sept. 2, a new report announced the unwelcome news that few jobs were added in August and the unemployment rate had not budged from a pitiful 9.1 percent.

Despite Obama’s major economic setback and his concern for the upcoming 2012 presidential election, he cannot continue this frightening trend of caving in to GOP pressure and big industry. What happened to the man who promised change not only for the future of the environment, but also for the country? Obama once again must stand up for those issues that propelled him into office. He must restore the faith of those who elected him because at the moment those supporters question the validity of his promises and his words.

Though the business of politics is precarious, you have to know where you stand and how far you are willing to go to sacrifice your own political principles for the appeasement of those enemies who would see you fail. President Obama, take note or another will take your place.

From a test tube of algae, U. Texas scientists and other engineers at the J.J. Pickle Research Campus have produced 2,200 gallons of algae in an effort to find an efficient alternative to fossil fuels.

“Through our method of letting single-celled algae reproduce by the double, we can grow it exponentially,” said Michael Jochum, chief scientist of AlgEternal Technologies. “This algae contains oils that can be extracted by the guys at UT and turned into either biodiesel, crude oil or even biomass — a substitute for coal.”

Jochum said that 12-foot-tall cylinders, or vertical growth modules, contain the algae organisms, water, nutrients and carbon dioxide, and allow the algae to grow at unlimited levels through the greenhouse growing structure and the intricate pipe system connecting them all together. The algae can also be grown in virtually any kind of water, even agricultural runoff, he said.

“We can also step in by taking carbon dioxide and turning it into fuel instead of wasting it into the environment or burying it,” Jochum said. “It’s cyclical, and it’d never run out.”

Jochum said his company was formed with the goal of using technology to efficiently get energy out of algae and found the right opportunity at UT when discovering the technique of oil extraction from oil used by engineers in the Center for Electromechanics at Pickle.

Electromechanics senior engineering scientist Mike Werst said the process of extracting oil from the algae depends on the division’s expertise with electricity.

“We often wonder what the heck we’re doing with biology right now, but apparently looking for high volts to let loose oils within algae cells,” Werst said. “And now we’re including all fields of scientists to work on this.”

Werst said within the next year, several units of this algae oil may be sold and scientists can begin experiments by using it as an energy source. They simply need to find a way to minimize the costs of capital and increase the volume of algae to make its oil more affordable.

“There’s been significant progress in commercializing it, but there’s room for improvement. We want to get a scale-up — a whole [power] plant,” Werst said. “We want to continue [research and development] and progress with new methods.”

Aside from the collaboration of engineers, Jerry Brand, director of the Culture Collection of Algae, is also collaborating on the project by providing algae cultures and researching the algae. The collection is supported by the National Science Foundation and the College of Natural Sciences.

“We’ve served as consultants to AlgEternal for the last two years,” Brand said. “We have decades of experience culturing and managing algae, and have one of the largest and most diverse collections of living algae in the world.”

Bananas are America’s favorite fresh fruit. Every year Americans eat more of them than apples and oranges combined. But unlike apples, for which there are Granny Smiths, Red Delicious, Fuji, among others, and oranges, which are members of the citrus family, there is only one banana variation readily found in American markets: the Cavendish.

The Cavendish is the seedless, yellow “dessert type” banana that Americans slice into their morning cereal and adorn their banana splits with. Of the thousands of banana cultivars, or variations, available worldwide the Cavendish is by far the most common. As a result of the vegetative growing techniques that large corporations use to produce the Cavendish, each of the over 100 billion commercial bananas sold annually is a genetically identical clone of one another. This lack of natural diversity, though beneficial for international marketing, has left the Cavendish vulnerable to species wide disaster—and unfortunately for the billions of people who enjoy them, a tropical threat known as Panama disease is currently devastating banana plantations throughout South Asia and Australia, and threatens to spread to the Americas.

Panama Disease, also called Fusarium wilt, is caused by the fungus Fusarium oxysporum. The fungus originates in the soil and travels up the plant’s vascular system, essentially rotting it from the inside out. A January edition of The New Yorker refers to the disease as the “H.I.V of banana plantations” because it can be easily transmitted from plantation to plantation through contact with infested soil.

“The problem with Fusarium wilt is that it is caused by a fungus infecting the roots of the banana plant, eventually moving into the vascular system and basically plugging it up so that the plant can’t get sufficient water and minerals,” said Dr. Alice Churchill, Cornell U. professor of plant pathology and microbiology. “This causes the leaves to wilt and turn yellow, resulting in reduced photosynthesis and eventual death of the plant,” she said. Churchill’s own research is with a similar fungus caused disease that affects banana plant leaves called Black Sigatoka, also known as “black leaf streak.”

Black Sigatoka, while serious, is successfully controllable with chemical sprayings, unlike Panama disease. Currently placing quarantines around infected areas in South Asia and Australia is one of the few protective methods that scientists can take to prevent the Fusarium wilt from spreading. Though many question the possibility of a banana apocalypse, according to Churchill, such an event is likely to occur because it has happened once before.

“By the end of the first half of the last century, a strain of the Panama disease pathogen, known as Race One, had basically wiped out the ‘Gros Michel’ cultivar, which was the commercial banana grown at that time in Central America,” she said. The Gros Michel was the dessert banana that grandparents enjoyed as kids; it was apparently bigger, hardier, and tastier than the Cavendish variety that is eaten now. But the reason why people no longer make banana cream pie out of Gros Michel today is because by the 1960s the cultivar was rendered virtually extinct by the Race One form of Panama disease. This was the time when the Cavendish replaced it as the globally produced commercial banana because it was found to be resistant to Race One. But now a new strain of the disease, Tropical Race Four, has appeared in South Asia—and this time the Cavendish is not immune.

“If disseminated widely, Tropical Race Four would affect approximately 85 percent of banana production worldwide,” warns Churchill. “So if, or when, it comes to this part of the world, not only will it kill Cavendish banana, which is typically what most of us eat, in the developed countries, it will destroy other cultivars as well, including many types of cooking bananas.” She explained that almost 90% of bananas worldwide are grown for local consumption and over half a billion people in places like Africa and Asia depend on them as a staple food.

“In the United States we eat on average 33 pounds of bananas per year, but in Uganda and other countries in east Africa they eat almost 550 pounds of bananas in some form each year” she said. “This disease is a problem, not only because of its potential impact on the price and availability of our favorite fruit, but also because it’s a life changing event for the people in developing countries who rely on bananas as a staple food and incomes. Those affected by Fusarium wilt lose both their livelihoods and an important source of nutrition.”

Most banana scientists agree that it’s only a matter of time before tropical Race Four of Panama disease makes it to this part of the world. “All it takes is one person with [infested] soil on their boots to inadvertently introduce it into Central or South America, the source of bananas for North America.”

To defend against the upcoming outbreak, some scientists have turned toward genetic modification in order to build a better banana. There are efforts to sequence the genome of resistant banana cultivars, identify the genes that give them resistance and then transfer that gene into the susceptible Cavendish bananas. Another possible solution to the banana blight would be the commercial production of a different banana cultivar, one that is resistant to Tropical Race Four, which would replace the Cavendish. But the prospects for this alternative are low because many of the current resistant cultivars look and taste much different from the Cavendish and may not find acceptance in the global market.

“My guess is that for the future of the banana, we’ll have something new, but I think it’s likely going to require genetic engineering,” predicted Churchill. “It’s going to require people having a better understanding of why genetic engineering may be the only means for continued export production of this sterile crop and where we may need to compromise to have continued easy access to America’s favorite fruit. Otherwise, bananas probably won’t be as readily available on our tables as they are now.”

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/09/14/panama-disease-threatens-future-of-the-common-banana/feed/0Column: Frankenburgers could save energy and the environmenthttp://uwire.com/2011/09/14/column-frankenburgers-could-save-energy-and-the-environment/
http://uwire.com/2011/09/14/column-frankenburgers-could-save-energy-and-the-environment/#commentsWed, 14 Sep 2011 13:12:02 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=25971Researchers around the world are racing to develop a commercially viable alternative to meat, without the inconvenience of raising and slaughtering millions of animals every year.

Lab-grown meat promises equivalent nutritional content to normal meat while requiring less energy and producing fewer emissions, but will people want to eat it once scientists work out the kinks?

The search for animal-free meat began more than a decade ago but has recently made serious advances. In 1999, Dutch inventor Willem van Eelen received patents for the “industrial production of meat using cell culture methods.” Eelen has been working on lab-grown meat ever since, sparking dozens of other labs to take up the cause over the past decade.

Scientists are now able to take cells from animals and entice them into reproducing in a nutrient-filled petri dish. The growing cells are then placed on a biocompatible scaffold, allowing the muscle tissue to further develop. The technology is still in its infancy, but it promises to not only change the way we eat meat but also benefit the environment.

A significant portion of land in the U.S. and around the world is used for raising livestock, particularly cattle. Farmers in the U.S. also use incredible quantities of land, fertilizer and fresh water to produce crops to feed these livestock. Lab-grown meat could make this wasteful process obsolete.

Eating organisms high on the food chain is an incredibly inefficient use of energy. Even livestock raised on a vegetarian diet represents a significant portion of lost energy because only a fraction of the energy an animal consumes will ever be passed on in the form of tasty meat.

Livestock also contributes significantly to global warming through emission of greenhouse gases via biological functions, as well as providing incentives for deforestation and other habitat destruction.

Lab-grown meat wouldn’t waste all of the energy and nutrients cows spend every day grazing, sleeping and doing whatever else it is cows do. It will also cut back on greenhouse gasses by reducing land requirements and cutting down on bovine flatulence.

A recent study by Oxford University and the University of Amsterdam estimated that replacing conventional livestock production with lab-grown meat could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 96 percent while requiring between 7 and 45 percent less energy.

Unfortunately, by all accounts the meat looks terrible and tastes even worse. One researcher described it as “steak-flavored Jell-O.”

The best in vitro meat anyone has come up with so far still looks far from appetizing. The small white gummy strings of protein are hardly recognizable as meat and are only about the size of a contact lens.

Scientists will have to find a way to overcome these aesthetic hurdles either by mimicking the system of blood vessels that give real meat its coloration, or finding another way to make the meat more marketable.

This issue could be solved with dyes for the ground meat researchers are currently pursuing, but constructing a convincing steak would take significantly more time, energy and effort, and would almost certainly not be cost effective if it can be done at all.

As with many groundbreaking areas of research, the technical challenges of producing lab-grown meat will likely be dwarfed by the marketing challenge of convincing people to try the new meat alternative.

Consumers have traditionally been wary of genetically modified and cloned food, and I expect lab-grown meat to be met with the same skepticism.

With the way the technology is shaping up, I think we can hope for a reasonable facsimile of a hamburger sometime in the future, but we shouldn’t hold our breath waiting for the slaughter-free porterhouse.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/09/14/column-frankenburgers-could-save-energy-and-the-environment/feed/0Column: Winning the clean energy racehttp://uwire.com/2011/09/13/column-winning-the-clean-energy-race/
http://uwire.com/2011/09/13/column-winning-the-clean-energy-race/#commentsTue, 13 Sep 2011 19:32:00 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=25963Over the last month, three major American solar companies have filed for bankruptcy. Collectively these companies—Solyndra,EvergreenSolarInc., andSpectraWatt—account for over 25 percent of American solar photovoltaic output. All three companies had received generous aid from the national and state governments.

Solyndra, once a Silicon Valley darling, received $525 million of federal loan guarantees in addition to $600 million in venture funding. President Obamavisitedtheirmanufacturingheadquarters last year and celebrated the company as a paragon of America’s clean energy potential. But now, Solyndra is laying off all of its 1,100 employees. Another company, Massachusetts-based Evergreen was solicited by Governor Deval L. Patrick on the campaign trail to set up a manufacturing facility in the state. Once in office, Patrick boldly granted the company$76 milliondollarsinaid. Now, Evergreen too has shut down all its U. factories and is $485.5 million in debt.

Why are these major American solar companies dying like flies? Two words: subsidies and China.

The unfortunate reality is that globally renewable energy (excluding biomass and hydroelectric) remains a subsidy-dependent business. Without policies to promote them, current solar and wind turbine technology can’t compete with dirtier energy sources like coal. Over the last decade, steady growth in solar demand was driven by generous European subsidies. But earlier this year, Germany and Italy (the largest solar markets) sharply reduced their costly solar feed-in-tariffs in the face of the European debt crisis. Feed-in-tariffs are policies that incentivize consumers to install renewable energy by mandating utilities to pay consumers a high fixed price for the clean energy they supply to the grid. The tariff cuts have led to excess PV supply, driving prices down over 20 percent—killing many Western companies that were already wounded by fierce competition from Chinese manufacturers.

The Chinese are also feeling the price squeeze, but have been buoyed by their persistent growth in market share. Three top Chinese solar companies—Suntech Power, Yingli Green Energy and Trina Solar—just announced that their second quartersales this year rose 33 to 63 percent compared to last year, which is quite a contrast from the situation in the U.S. The drivers behind the growing success of the Chinese solar industry are both obvious and subtle. Lower labor costs, cheap loans from state controlled banks, low environmental regulatory costs, and cheap land from the government have obviously led to lower Chinese prices. On a more subtle level the most successful firms have benefited from having Western educated managers, efficient automation, continued commitment to quality, and in some cases economies of scale and vertical integration. Intense price competition between Chinese firms has also helped.

What does all this mean for America? What can America do to become competitive in the clean energy race? Well, in an ideal world Congress and the President would pass an aggressive carbon tax to unleash market forces to develop, fund, and scale the most competitive clean energy ideas. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like a carbon tax will be happening anytime soon.

Regardless, important policies can and should be put in place to tackle America’s energy, climate, and competitiveness problems. Continuing the current practice of subsidizing specific companies like Solyndra in a commodity like industry, however, is not an effective, reliable or fair way to achieve these objectives. The recent cases of government-backed solar companies filing for bankruptcy show that political decision makers are not skilled venture capitalists. When the government hands out special loan back guarantees or tax breaks to individual firms like Solyndra, it is essentially unfairly and inefficiently picking winners, mindlessly risking tax payer dollars and unintentionally creating market distortions in the process.

Having learned their lesson from distorting economics, policymakers must now make broad and massive research and development investments in game, changing clean energy technologies. Rather than betting on individual companies in a commodity like industry, tax-payer dollars should go towards creating leap-frog technologies that will one day allow for clean energy to compete without subsidies and position American companies to be leaders in the field. Cutting edge black silicon solar technology (developed here at Harvard), nano-structured solar cells that mimic photosynthesis and air-borne wind turbines; these are the kind of innovations that government should be much more aggressively funding. We need to simultaneously advance a whole host of disruptive technologies.

America must come to terms with the fact that it can’t beat China in manufacturing commoditized products. Our share of the global clean energy pie will have to be won through creativity and innovation. We must accept the new norm that we’ll have to constantly out innovate the rest of the world in order to stay competitive. Whatever ideas we come up with, low-cost competitors will copy in a few years or months. We should look to Apple for inspiration, the company that stands tall in a commoditized world by relentlessly focusing on reinventing itself, creating new paradigms, pushing out new products, and improving old ones.

Michael Mann may be one of the most highly-scrutinized scientists in the world today.

Since Virginia Attorney General and University alumnus Ken Cuccinelli filed subpoenas demanding the release of his research in April 2010, the former University professor has made headlines worldwide.

Mann, who taught at U. Virginia from 1999 to 2005, now directs the Earth Science Systems Center at Pennsylvania State U. Despite his move north, criticism remains focused on his time at Virgnia.

Cuccinelli claims that Mann’s research on global warming defrauds tax payers by using government money to fund suspect research. Although a judge rejected the demand in August 2010, Cucinelli appealed the case, which is now stalled in the Supreme Court of Virginia.

To exacerbate matters for Mann, the American Traditional Institute filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the University, resulting in the release of nearly 4,000 of Mann’s documents two weeks ago. Last week, Mann initiated legal proceedings to prevent ATI from accessing further files.

While Mann has gained increasing notoriety in the attorney general’s office and with conservative think tanks, his efforts to protect his work have gained the respect of fellow scientists and scholars.
“Mike [Mann] is standing up for academic freedom by objecting to the misuses of that kind of information,” Environmental Sciences Research Prof. Bill Keene said.

Mann is best known for his “hockey stick” graph, a visual representation published in 1998 of climate warming since the industrial revolution. The data show an upturn in global temperature, and provide a scientific basis for theories of global warming.

Keene characterizes the graph as “a visceral description” of the phenomenon.

Keene added this graph does not sit well with conservative ideologues. Mann has forcefully responded to their attacks and proudly accepts his role in the fight against those who do not believe that human activity affects climate change.

“A personal hero of mine, Steve Schneider … once told me to wear the attacks by climate change deniers as a badge of honor; that they were simply an indication of the importance of my work, and the threat that the significance of my research findings held for those doing the bidding of vested interests,” Mann said in an email.

Controversy of this sort is nothing new to Mann, who called recent events “just the latest in these unseemly efforts to discredit me.” Nevertheless, the legal battles Cuccinelli and ATI have waged have taken their toll.

“I think it’s aged him,” Keene said. “I think it’s very tough to be able to face this same kind of abuse all the time.”

If ATI gains access to the additional 5,000 documents still under review by the University, Mann’s personal correspondence while at the University would become “fodder for cherry picking,” Keene said.

“The inclination is to protect yourself, and that’s what Mike’s tried to do,” Keene said. “I think he’s done it not just to protect himself, but to protect the science. He’s on the front line of this and now our University’s on the front lines.”

In Mann’s view, the battle between science and ideologically-driven groups has been waged for years.

“I think it’s as important today as it has been for centuries for scientists to stand up against the efforts to undermine science by those with an agenda,” Mann said. “Whether it be the medical science that demonstrated the adverse health impacts of cigarette smoking, the harm done by environmental contaminants and carcinogens, or the damage to our climate being done by our continued reliance on fossil fuels, science and scientists have been targeted for decades by industry special interests who consider scientific findings inconvenient to their financial interests.

Similarly, his colleagues do not believe that public scrutiny will bar the development of climate change research.

“In the long term people are going to look back and all of these activities [debates] are going to be seen as road bumps towards doing something about climate change,” Asst. Environmental Science Prof. Amato Evan said.

—Grace Hollis contributed with reporting

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/09/09/the-mann-behind-climate-change/feed/0Column: Renewable energyhttp://uwire.com/2011/09/09/column-renewable-energy/
http://uwire.com/2011/09/09/column-renewable-energy/#commentsFri, 09 Sep 2011 16:18:02 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=25824My interest in alternative energy technologies was sparked by an eye-opening trip to India with my family nearly seven years ago. At first, I was just upset about having to sit in 110 degree heat without air conditioning because the power was out (the local utility had instituted a program of “load shedding,” whereby it intentionally shut off power to certain districts and neighborhoods over the course of the day in order to curb skyrocketing electricity demand). However, over the past several years, as I see such problems grow worse via my annual summer trips to India, I have begun to develop a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between energy availability and economic development in one of the world’s fastest growing economies. I quickly realized that gasoline in India is several times more expensive than gasoline in the United States, so that it is often the biggest obstacle to owning a car. State governments in India schedule power cuts everyday in an effort to conserve limited fossil fuel supplies. The price of electricity is so high that energy conservation is not the product of a guilty social conscience, but a necessity to keep the utility bills manageable. And this paltry list of symptoms is just the tip of the iceberg in regards to the malaise that is pervasive in India’s energy industry.

But there is some good news. If you look at the energy policies of nations around the world, you will notice that even though countries differ dramatically in their approaches to energy policy, there seems to be one idea that many (albeit in differing degrees) have subscribed to: diversifying their energy supply portfolios to include more than just traditional fossil fuels like oil and gas. Countries around the world, including India, have finally begun to make progress in finding solutions to the energy crisis that has become a very palpable obstacle to economic growth.

They understand that as fossil fuel resources are depleted and energy prices subsequently rise; as the prospect of global climate change threatens land use patterns, strains the adequacy of our food production capabilities, and places a disproportionate adaptation burden on the populations of developing countries; as an ever increasing global population and burgeoning middle class demand cheaper and more abundant energy supplies, it will become ever more critical that we develop a viable long-term solution to the current energy crisis. Though perceptions of scientific uncertainty plague discussions of climate change, estimates of future fossil reserves are highly variable, and the entire debate regarding energy policy has become radically polarized, one thing is certain: The laws of supply and demand ensure that fossil fuel based energy will continue to get more expensive in years to come. Hence, regardless of whether the public reaches consensus on climate change theories, basic economics urges immediate global action in regards to energy supply, if for no other reason than to keep energy prices down (nobody likes paying $4 for a gallon of gas). Luckily, as technological improvements decrease the expense of alternative energy technologies, bringing them closer to cost parity with traditional fossil fuels, many of the aforementioned problems could be mitigated in the long-term by increasing the penetration of resources like wind, solar, biomass, geothermal, and nuclear.

Because other nations have already made significant strides towards implementing policies that benefit technology development, manufacturing, and demand creation for clean energy, there exists great potential for the United States to learn from and adapt such policies for domestic implementation. Germany’s feed in tariff has quickly catalyzed (though, admittedly, with its fair share of difficulties) the solar and wind industry so that renewables now supply almost 10 percent of Germany’s energy needs and Germany has the world’s highest installed capacity of solar. The United Kingdom has an aggressive policy portfolio in place that uses a mix of energy taxes, feed in tariffs, and renewable energy credits to help the country meet not only its domestic renewable energy and energy efficiency targets, but also the European Union mandates. India has instituted an innovative energy efficiency credit trading scheme, and is working diligently to improve its somewhat overambitious and confusing portfolio of renewable energy policies. Brazil, thanks to its unparalleled hydro and sugarcane resource, meets almost 90 percent of its energy needs with renewables and is especially leading the way in affordable biofuels development. And even South Korea–a relative newcomer in the renewable energy race–is pushing hard to establish a Renewable Portfolio Standard and a cap and trade program within the next five years.

Despite seeing the positive strides taken by other countries, the United States has been uncharacteristically slow to follow suit. In recent years, China has moved past the United States in total installed wind capacity, while Germany leads the world in solar. While we can, and should, applaud the efforts made by these countries, their rapid growth poses a potential problem for the United States. If we don’t regain the lead in the clean energy arena, rather than being a boon for domestic manufacturing and a solution to our over-dependence on foreign fuels, renewable energy technologies will become another foreign obligation that will strain budgets and require massive international military engagements exactly like the ones we bemoan today.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/09/09/column-renewable-energy/feed/0Shining the light on solar energyhttp://uwire.com/2011/09/07/shining-the-light-on-solar-energy/
http://uwire.com/2011/09/07/shining-the-light-on-solar-energy/#commentsWed, 07 Sep 2011 20:48:34 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=25745Solar energy is one field of alternative energies that is fairly misunderstood. Most people know what solar panels are but may be unaware that there are other ways of harnessing the sun’s energy to power the amenities that we use everyday. Tim Lupo, Extension Specialist for the N.C. Solar Center, said there are two types of solar energy: passive and active.

According to Lupo, passive solar energy pertains mostly to the construction of a building. Examples of this type of solar energy are seen throughout N.C. State’s Solar House. It has amenities like natural lighting fixtures, which maximize outdoor lighting in the interior of a building.

The solar house also includes a large, south-facing sunspace—a two-story room with large windows to heat the house in the winter. The solar house also has thick, brick Trombe walls that help heat the bedrooms by providing solar heat. These walls store heat and slowly release it throughout the day. The basic concept of passive solar energy is using what is already there without having to convert it. These are very basic forms of solar energy, but take planning when building a structure.

Active solar energy is the more commonly recognized of the two, with its poster child: the solar panel. Yet, solar panels, while being well-known, are not well-understood.

According to Lupo, solar panels consist of two layers of silicon with a metal conductor in between. One of the layers is ingrained with atoms that have fewer electrons, usually boron atoms, the other with atoms that have more electrons, like phosphorous. When this system is exposed to sunlight, photons, the source of energy from the sun, force the electrons off of their atoms, which then travel between the two layers through the metal conductor, resulting in the production of electric current.

This current is then sent to the electric company via the grid, or the network that provides electricity from the electric company to the consumer. The electric company uses this energy to support the grid and pays whomever provides the energy. Thus, buildings that have solar panels do not necessarily run on solar energy, but they do provide this environmentally-friendly energy for the grid to use.

This raises the question of whether or not people who harness the sun’s energy through solar panels are doing it for the economic reasons, or strictly for the environment.

“Most people go solar for environmental concerns, but there is an economic incentive,” Lupo said. “[Solar is] not a quick payback, so you have to have interests in other areas like the environmental impact.”

The initial cost of converting a small, residential structure is about $35,000, which Lupo rationalizes as being a reason for someone to have environmental concerns and economic interests. However, once someone decides to use solar panels, there are significant tax incentives. The state has a 35 percent tax incentive, and there is also a 30 percent federal tax incentive for the installation of a solar panel system. With these incentives, the cost to install solar panels could actually be cut in half, making the payback period significantly shorter.

With a rise in alternative energy use, people may wonder what direction solar energy is headed in the years to come. Although there is research going into futuristic products like PV ink, a solar panel technology in ink form, Lupo said these ink products will not be market ready for quite a while.

However, Lupo believes that significant improvements will be made in the efficiency of active solar energy products in the near future. This will also effectively shorten the payback period of going solar by increasing the output of current, according to Lupo.

Another issue is energy storage. As it is now, the energy company grid is acting as the storage space for solar energy producers; however, if an energy storage device is made and produced, this would be a new avenue for solar energy, allowing consumers to effectively store their own energy. Lupo said this can improve cutting costs.

“The more people who invest in it [solar], the cheaper it’s going to be,” Lupo said.

Former U. Virginia Environmental Sciences Prof. Michael Mann began legal procedures last Friday to intervene on the attempt of the American Tradition Institute to acquire documents of his research on global warming.

The move comes a week after the University submitted nearly 4,000 pages of Mann’s documents to ATI, which requested the information through the Freedom of Information Act. The University has withheld more than 5,000 pages of Mann’s documents and could release some of them to ATI in two weeks, according to ATI.

The University does not comment on pending litigation but will continue assessing which documents and correspondence are legally exempt through FOIA and providing all responsive, non-exempt records, University spokesperson Carol Wood said in an email.

Mann, who now teaches at Pennsylvania State University, is challenging a protective order which requires the University to disclose information relating to Mann’s research to ATI, a conservative think tank. The only people who would then be able to access the research would be ATI and the presiding judge, according to a press release by the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The controversy about Mann’s research has been a source of public scrutiny for more than a year. Virginia Attorney General and University alumnus Ken Cuccinelli filed subpoenas demanding the University relinquish Mann’s research in April 2010.

The University challenged Cuccinelli’s rights to the research in court and won on the grounds that Mann’s documents are not the kind the public is legally entitled to. Cucinelli has since appealed that decision in the Supreme Court of Virginia.

ATI has requested the email correspondence and research documents of 39 scientists from the University through FOIA, said David Schnare, director of the Environmental Law Center at ATI. These documents collectively contain information about five research grants.

ATI is specifically interested in the reports detailing these scientists’ findings because of concerns about accuracy.

“We want to go in and see what assumptions were used and whether those assumptions make sense to ourselves and to others in the subject area,” Schnare said.

Numerous independent organizations have already cleared Mann’s name of any wrongdoing regarding climate change research. The most recent investigation was conducted by the U.S. National Science Foundation Office of the Inspector General, concluding there was “no research misconduct” and closing the case Aug. 15.

Schnare thinks the legal dispute should solely be handled between the University and ATI.

“We don’t have a dispute with Mr. Mann — he’s just one of 39 people from whom we wanted emails,” he said.

ATI also argued there is no legal basis to Mann’s attempt to block the request for his research.

“Mr. Mann doesn’t own these emails,” Schnare said. “There is no expectation of privacy when using the university email.”

Mann does not agree with Schnare’s perception of the situation.

“I clearly have the right to make sure that my interests are represented in any matters involving the release of my private emails,” Mann said in an email. “Apparently Mr. [Chris] Horner [director of litigation at ATI] wishes that were somehow not the case — which is really a statement about him, and his ethics and integrity, more than anything else.”

The union believes Mann’s research should not be disclosed to ATI to ensure scientific integrity.

“Dr. Mann is protecting scientists’ ability to communicate with one another without fear of harassment,” said Michael Halpern, program manager for the union’s Scientific Integrity Program. “ATI should not be given special privileges. It’s inappropriate for any outside group to have access to emails about student grades, research development and other privileged information.”

ATI believes Mann’s legal intervention is less motivated by a desire for scientific integrity and more by his need to prevent public humiliation.

“Mr. Mann’s problem is he’s afraid he’s going to be embarrassed,” Schnare said. “Embarrassment is something he should have thought about when he wrote his emails in the first place.”

ATI has already contacted University attorneys in an attempt to resolve the issue.

“We’ll sort this out one way or another,” Schnare said.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/09/07/mann-pursues-legal-action-to-prevent-release-of-emails/feed/0Column: Al Gore’s rants about global warming skeptics has gone much too farhttp://uwire.com/2011/08/31/column-al-gore%e2%80%99s-rants-about-global-warming-skeptics-has-gone-much-too-far/
http://uwire.com/2011/08/31/column-al-gore%e2%80%99s-rants-about-global-warming-skeptics-has-gone-much-too-far/#commentsWed, 31 Aug 2011 13:54:36 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=25458“One day,” according to Al Gore, “climate change skeptics will be seen in the same negative light as racists.” Coming from the mouth of everyone’s favorite presidential loser, this quote came in an interview with Gore on website UStream.tv, where Gore also claimed that climate change activists such as himself must “win the conversation” against the nonbelievers.

So essentially, people who don’t believe in global warming are going to be the new racists. They will somehow elevate themselves from common skeptics to the status of full-blown racists simply because they reject a theory that not even all scientists agree upon?

While I personally do believe in global warming, I disagree with this statement for the same reason I disagree with every statement where people claim “x is the new y.” We’ve all heard these types of statements before. Popular versions of them range from “30 is the new 20″ to “gay is the new straight,” but each variation really proves to be as stupid as the last.

But should someone who doesn’t believe in global warming really be seen in the same light as a racist? I don’t think so. Al Gore is simply trying to take his global warming assault on the senses to the next level by appealing to the common man’s disgust for racists. By comparing global warming skeptics to someone everyone hates, Gore has successfully planted the seed in the minds of those who haven’t yet decided for themselves on the matter. He has performed a form of inception, to some degree, which would make Christopher Nolan proud.

Al Gore is smarter than this.

“There came a time when racist comments would come up in the course of the conversation and in years past they were just natural,” Gore continued. “Then there came a time when people would say, ‘Hey, man why do you talk that way, I mean that is wrong. I don’t go for that so don’t talk that way around me. I just don’t believe that.’ That happened in millions of conversations and slowly the conversation was won.”

Who is Gore trying to kid with this? It is a conversation about global warming, not racism, and suggesting that it is morphing to that status is just plain stupid. Who really cares if people believe in global warming anyway? Plenty of people don’t, and while I think they’re fooling themselves it really is their prerogative.

Most of the scientific community believes it to be happening and I agree with them. A lot of companies have adopted more “green” policies; car companies concerned with emissions have created more electric vehicles, and more and more politicians urge people to reduce their carbon footprint.

And guess what? According to a 2010 study by Yale U., “Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 are relatively apathetic about the threat.” The study also found that two-thirds of younger Americans don’t even believe it exists, and 61 percent of them say that they don’t take any actions to try to reduce it if it is real.

Humans in positions of power have made changes to deal with it and do what they can and many others make a good-faith effort to confront the issue, and the ones who do nothing don’t. End of story.

Whatever is going to happen to the planet is going to happen regardless as humans have relatively little control over it. People who don’t believe in global warming shouldn’t be seen as racists, however. I’d like to reserve that term for the real racists among us. Let’s just call global warming deniers what they really are — apathetic and ignorant.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/08/31/column-al-gore%e2%80%99s-rants-about-global-warming-skeptics-has-gone-much-too-far/feed/0General Electric CEO discusses energy markethttp://uwire.com/2011/08/19/general-electric-ceo-discusses-energy-market/
http://uwire.com/2011/08/19/general-electric-ceo-discusses-energy-market/#commentsFri, 19 Aug 2011 11:32:32 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=25252As the energy industry grows, American companies need to develop their natural gas, solar and nuclear energy technologies, Jeffrey Immelt said Thursday in the penultimate lecture of the Leading Voices in Politics and Policy summer lecture series. Immelt is currently Chief Executive Officer of General Electric, serves as chairperson of President Barack Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness and sits on the College’s Board of Trustees.

Immelt encouraged the U.S. government to establish clearly defined policies regarding energy and the environment without allowing regulation and bureaucracy to slow growth.

Despite the current lack of “appetite” for discussing broad energy policies in the United States, the country needs to focus on a legislative agenda for energy policy in order to compete with Europe, China and India, Immelt said.

Although Immelt said he recognized the important role of the Environmental Protection Agency, he said wanted to see the EPA and other government agencies held accountable for their policies. Immelt said the long and arduous permit process can delay projects for years, limiting economic growth and job creation.

“The role of the regulator is to make it safe,” he said. “It’s not to flip an on or off switch.”

Immelt described himself as a capitalist who supports free markets, and said that the government will always play a role in energy markets.

“At no time and in no country has energy ever been a true free market,” he said.

Government regulation, taxation and investment all affect the energy industry, impacting which technologies gain support, Immelt said. He used nuclear power as an example of an industry that will need government support to develop further, particularly following the recent nuclear meltdown of the Fukushima reactor in Japan.

“If nuclear ever comes back in the U.S., it will only be because the government wants it to,” Immelt said.

It is important not to pick a favorite energy technology, he said, but rather to see which succeed. Despite the recent concerns about nuclear energy following the disaster in Japan, he said he will “see where nuclear goes” but thinks it is “a technology for the long-term.”

Energy policy should focus on energy security and investing in clean technologies, he said. Immelt added that he does not approach investing in clean energy from an ideological or environmentalism standpoint, but instead came to the conclusion on his own that global warming is occurring and is influenced by human activity following his own study of scientific data.

The country needs to address the issue of global warming from a practical standpoint rather than continuing to discuss the problem as a burden that the country should address for moral concerns, he said.

“The reason why the country has not gelled towards change in clean energy is because it’s viewed as elitist, because it’s viewed as a rich person’s thought,” he said. “It’s viewed as a fancy problem, and none of us have done a good enough job of making it real, of making it work, of talking about how it creates jobs.”

The energy industry plays a major role in job creation, so investing in energy has the potential to create hundreds of thousands of jobs in the United States, he said. He challenged the notion that GE’s exportation of energy and aviation technologies was giving away American jobs to workers in other countries. Almost all of GE’s aviation technology and its major energy technologies are manufactured in the United States and then exported, which creates jobs in the United States, he said.

He also discussed some of the ideas that have emerged in conversations among the members of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, including the development of infrastructure, prioritization of job training and retraining and reformation of the regulation permit cycle to avoid slowing growth.

In the long term, Immelt said the country “needs to get its mojo back” and build up competitiveness by improving education, particularly in math and science.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/08/19/general-electric-ceo-discusses-energy-market/feed/0The Nissan Leaf: An improbable electric futurehttp://uwire.com/2011/08/03/the-nissan-leaf-an-improbable-electric-future/
http://uwire.com/2011/08/03/the-nissan-leaf-an-improbable-electric-future/#commentsWed, 03 Aug 2011 14:34:54 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=25013I’m a fan of Formula One racing, the kind of guy that has seen every episode of the BBC’s Top Gear … six times. My idea of wealth is having a 10-car garage. It is with a heavy heart that I recognize a sad fact of life: in order to allow the weekend indulgence of driving a fast, gasoline-powered car, we’re all going to have to start driving motors on the weekdays that do not consume fossil fuels. It is thus, ironically, that the widespread adoption of alternative-fuel vehicles will save the enthusiasts’ 500-horsepower sports car.

This doesn’t mean that going to work or picking up groceries needs to be the equivalent sensual experience of being locked in a white, padded room. In theory, in order for alternative fuel cars to take off, they should have as close of a driving experience to today’s modest family hatchback as possible; buyers shouldn’t feel like they are taking a step down in enjoyment for a step up in environmentalism. Alternative-fuel cars should match our current lifestyles and be affordable to boot. It is with this mindset that I attacked a test drive of the all-electric Nissan Leaf.

A Nissan representative came right out and told me that they’re on a mission to win hearts and minds, not necessarily forge immediate sales. Many fear the Leaf is an aggrandized golf cart and that it is not suitable as more than a city runabout. In 2011, it turns out that the former is false, but the latter is true.

The first thing you notice when you get in the Leaf is that it is like every other small, modern, modest family hatch you’ve ever been in. There is rear legroom to seat five and enough room in the trunk for a serious excursion to Costco. Satellite navigation is standard, along with a bluetooth sound system. Upholstery is predictably cloth, but the seats are comfortable enough. The car starts with the press of a button; authentication is handled by the proximity dongle in your pocket.

It is after pressing the starter button that you notice the truth of the vehicle you are in: lithium polymer batteries under the front seats power up the accessories, and the engine is silent. The stubby gear knob allows you two selections of forward drive — regular and “Eco,” which delays the throttle response to ease you into a more relaxed and engery-saving driving style. The electric motor has a nearly flat torque curve, allowing the single gear ratio to move the car efficiently from a standing start to beyond highway speeds (topping at 93 mph). Regenerative braking keeps your mileage up in stop-and-go driving.

So far, so good. The Leaf is definitely not a golf cart; it is a real car. Give it the beans, and you can make the tires squeal briefly. Disc brakes stop you quickly, and the steering is fairly responsive. So what’s the problem? The problem isn’t the car — it’s the context it’s living in.

Gas stations with electric chargers are few and far between. Workplaces, parking lots, and parking garages with chargers are equally sparse. (MIT Facilities did not respond to a request for information about campus charging accommodations.) This functionally limits your range from the Boston area to Worcester and maybe a run to New Hampshire for discount imbibements. The Leaf will not take you to New York City — even one way — unless you are a hypermiler.

Charging from a standard 120VAC 15A outlet is an overnight affair at best. 240VAC chargers can be installed for a hefty fee at your home and can charge the car 80 percent in 2–3 hours. 480VDC chargers can hit 80 percent in 30 minutes, but require the electrical service of a commercial building. In an urban community like Cambridge, where most people park curbside and landlords won’t allow 240V-charger installations, the thought of hundreds of power cables spanning the sidewalks at night seems like an improbable electric future.

The Leaf is a good runabout, a perfect vehicle for companies like Zipcar, and a candidate for future taxis. Environmentalists love the zero emissions. But it is not ready for the masses: the Leaf does not fit the road-tripping American lifestyle. It is also dependent on a clean electric grid in order to fully realize the zero CO2 emissions.

The Leaf is an important stepping stone to the alternative fuel future. But quick-charge batteries and very high power chargers (over 50kW) at every gas station and at home are the only way to make that future electric. There is still some science to be done with hydrogen fuel cell technology, and hydrogen filling stations are almost nonexistent outside of southern California, but the 5-minute fill up time fits the American way. Look for hydrogen to power the roads in 25 years and save the planet — and the gasoline-powered sports car.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/08/03/the-nissan-leaf-an-improbable-electric-future/feed/0Near end of year, world population to hit 7 billion, prompting concernshttp://uwire.com/2011/08/01/near-end-of-year-world-population-to-hit-7-billion-prompting-concerns/
http://uwire.com/2011/08/01/near-end-of-year-world-population-to-hit-7-billion-prompting-concerns/#commentsMon, 01 Aug 2011 13:57:37 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=24982The world’s population will hit 7 billion this year, raising concerns about the economic and environmental consequences associated with continued growth, according to an article by a Harvard School of Public Health professor.

In a paper published in Friday’s edition of the journal Science, David E. Bloom, the chair of the Department of Global Health and Population, explored the global implications of the human population surpassing 7 billion, a milestone the United Nations has projected will occur on Oct. 31.

The exploding population increase will take the greatest toll on developing regions of the world, Bloom said. By 2050, according to a U.N. estimate, worldwide population will rise to approximately 9.3 billion people. 97 percent of that increase will occur in less developed nations.

“The world’s demographic center of gravity will continue to shift from the more to the less developed countries and especially to the least developed countries, many of which will face unprecedented and daunting challenges related to the supply and distribution of food, water, housing, and energy,” Bloom wrote in the article.

Over the next 40 years, the population increase in Africa alone will make up 49 percent of population growth worldwide.

In more developed countries, however, population growth will slow over the next half-century. As life expectancy increases, birth rates continue to drop, and as the population ages, the proportion of retired adults will increase relative to those of working age.

More developed nations will face their own host of demographic shift problems, including supporting this aging population whose reliance on social welfare programs may outstrip the ability of the workforce to finance these programs.

Adolescents and young adults, aged 15 to 24, currently outnumber those 60 and above by 54 percent, Bloom wrote. After 2025, however, the older population will overtake the younger, setting off a gigantic demographic shift. While those aged 60 and above make up 11 percent of the world’s population today, by 2050, they will comprise 22 percent.

“Although the issues immediately confronting developing countries are different from those facing the rich countries, in a globalized world demographic challenges anywhere are demographic challenges everywhere,” Bloom said in a press release.

Worldwide population reached 1 billion in 1800, 2 billion in 1927, and 3 billion in 1960. Since then, population has increased by 1 billion approximately every 13 years.

Depending on changes in birth rate, the population in 2100 could range from 6.2 to 15.8 billion people, according to U.N. estimates.

“We have to tackle some tough issues ranging from the unmet need for contraception among hundreds of millions of women and the huge knowledge-action gaps we see in the area of child survival, to the reform of retirement policy and the development of global immigration policy,” Bloom said in the press release. “It’s just plain irresponsible to sit by idly while humankind experiences full force the perils of demographic change.”

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/08/01/near-end-of-year-world-population-to-hit-7-billion-prompting-concerns/feed/0Column: Paper or canvas?http://uwire.com/2011/07/28/column-paper-or-canvas/
http://uwire.com/2011/07/28/column-paper-or-canvas/#commentsThu, 28 Jul 2011 15:55:05 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=24963Plastic may no longer be an option. Austin Mayor Lee Leffingwell, along with City Council members Chris Riley and Mike Martinez, introduced a resolution Monday that would eventually lead to a ban on plastic shopping bags in most Austin stores. In doing so, Austin would join a growing number of environmentally-conscious cities and countries that have chosen to banish the wasteful plastic scourge.

This is not the first time Leffingwell has supported banning plastic bags. In 2008, when he served as a member of City Council, Leffingwell proposed banning plastic shopping bags. His efforts did not lead to a ban then, however. A group of six large retail stores pledged to voluntarily reduce bag use at their stores instead.

The reduction amounted to about a 20-percent decline in use over the past two years, according to Leffingwell. The agreed target was 50 percent. According to the Austin American-Statesman, the mayor cited the program’s general ineffectiveness and its small size (it involved only the original six retailers who proposed it) as reasons for revisiting the idea of a city-wide ban.

The mayor also cited a January 2011 report from the city’s Solid Waste Services Department, which estimated that Austin’s plastic bag habit — some 263 million bags used annually — costs the city more than $850,000 per year in landfill maintenance and roadside cleanup.

The city council will consider the new resolution at its Aug. 4 meeting. If adopted, the resolution would direct city employees, along with local retailers, to create an implementation plan. The mayor has said that a ban would be imposed gradually and would likely allow for some exceptions to be made. Small stores, for instance, might be exempt. However, he was careful to say that the ban must be widely applicable to be effective.

A number of U.S. cities have banned the plastic bag in stores. In 2007, San Francisco was the first to do so. Portland is the most recent member of the club, which has grown to include Brownsville, Palo Alto and Los Angeles County.

Internationally, banning them is more popular. Mexico City banned plastic bags in 2009; the Chinese government has severely restricted their use; and Italy banished them entirely in January.

Plastic bags can persist in the environment for decades. They do not degrade readily; they merely break into smaller pieces. They pile up in mountains and in landfills, pollute rivers, swirl endlessly in oceans and endanger wildlife. But while managing plastic bags after they have been used and discarded certainly creates environmental problems, it is by some accounts a smaller problem than the consequences of making the bags initially.

Plastic bags are made from oil and natural gas, and the environmental cost of producing them is severe. They waste non-renewable resources that could be used for more productive purposes. The Chinese government estimates that its restrictions save some 37 million barrels of oil per year from being used to make plastic bags.

According to Salon, an online magazine, only 2 percent of plastic bags are successfully recycled in the United States. Many are thrown away and sent to landfills, but even bags sent to recycling centers pose problems. Because they are so thin, the bags are difficult to process and often clog machines, requiring them to be removed by hand.

Businesses favor them, of course, because they are cheap, costing 1 to 2 cents per bag, compared to paper bags’ 4- to 6-cent price tag. And manufacturers claim that making them is less damaging than making paper bags. Paper bags require that trees be ground up, and because they are heavier than plastic ones, paper bags require more fuel to transport to retailers.

But that argument fails to account for the higher recycling rate for paper bags, many of which are now made from recycled materials to begin with. Moreover, trees, if properly managed, are a renewable resource, unlike oil and natural gas.

And paper bags are not the only alternative. During the voluntary reduction program, the Texas Retailers Association, a group that opposes the mayor’s proposed ban, estimates that the participating stores sold more than 900,000 reusable canvas bags to customers.

These bags, also often made from recycled materials, can be used over and over again. Getting customers to use them has been the primary issue. Eliminating plastic bags, or charging for them, may be an incentive customers will respond to.

Plastic bags serve their purpose quite well, and they epitomize convenience. But the piles of discarded bags and small bits of plastic floating in our rivers and oceans are slowly assembling into a permanent monument to the consequences of our collective laziness.

According to the Austin American-Statesman, Leffingwell said, “It won’t take much for Austinites to understand that plastic is no longer an option.” He is right, and Austin should kick this wasteful habit.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/07/28/column-paper-or-canvas/feed/0City officials discuss ban on plastic bags in Austin storeshttp://uwire.com/2011/07/26/city-officials-discuss-ban-on-plastic-bags-in-austin-stores/
http://uwire.com/2011/07/26/city-officials-discuss-ban-on-plastic-bags-in-austin-stores/#commentsTue, 26 Jul 2011 15:55:36 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=24898Plastic may not be an option for Austin shoppers much longer.

City officials are deliberating on the best way to implement a ban on plastic shopping bags to lessen negative environmental impacts, Mayor Lee Leffingwell announced Monday.

Plastic bags cost the city roughly $850 thousand a year to clean up and dispose of, Leffingwell said in a press release. He said the proposed ban on the bags will be further discussed and voted on at the Aug. 4 City Council meeting.

“Single-use plastic bags are both harmful to the environment and costly to our local economy,” Leffingwell said. “They create litter in our rivers and streams. They’re harmful to wildlife and because bags are not biodegradable, they are around forever.”

Leffingwell’s spokesman Matt Curtis said city officials have attempted to reduce the use of disposable plastic bags in previous years by designing a voluntary program for retailers to limit the number of plastic bags they use, but the plan only reduced usage by 20 percent.

“Currently our community uses about 263 million plastic bags each year,” Curtis said. “The best thing to do for the environment and the economy is to look at ways to have a severe reduction of their usage.”

Curtis said the mayor’s team has asked City Manager Marc Ott to create a plan that will gradually reduce and eliminate the use of plastic bags. The best alternative for shoppers is to invest in reusable bags, he said.

“Plastic bags are bad for our community, and it is time to do something about it,” Curtis said. “This has been done in other communities, and it has worked. Austin is one of the most intelligent cities in the United States, so I think if this can work elsewhere it can work in Austin.”

He said while there are methods for recycling plastic bags, many still end up in landfills and are harmful because they do not decompose naturally.

“They cause more problems than anything,” Curtis said. “We do expect one thing out of this ban, and that is a drastic and hopefully complete reduction of plastic bags going into our local environment.”

English senior Thomas White said he feels more people would make the switch to reusable shopping bags if they did not have the option of using plastic bags.

“I understand they can have negative environmental impacts, and I’d be willing to work around not using plastic bags,” White said. “We all still have to buy groceries and carry them somehow, and I think the Austin community especially would be willing to work around the ban.”

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/07/26/city-officials-discuss-ban-on-plastic-bags-in-austin-stores/feed/0Column: Tax CO2, toohttp://uwire.com/2011/07/12/column-tax-co2-too/
http://uwire.com/2011/07/12/column-tax-co2-too/#commentsTue, 12 Jul 2011 13:55:31 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=24712We must do something. This is something, therefore we must do it. This is a seductive fallacy, especially when the problem is as dire as climate change. Nonetheless, not all climate change policies are created equal. A simple carbon tax combined with a reduction in personal and corporate income taxes would be a good idea. On the other hand, subsidies for the production of alternative energy sources or a cap-and-trade system would not.

Subsidies for the production of alternative energy sources essentially mean that governments decide for their citizens which technologies are best. The experience of western governments picking winners and losers among new businesses and technologies over the last century has been disappointing at best. It is nearly impossible for any one person to understand all of the information that is relevant to weighing the costs and benefits of every possible technology. Any decision by a centralized decision maker is therefore unlikely to be the optimal decision for every conceivable situation.

The decentralized decision-making process of the marketplace, however, does not suffer from this starting problem. If there were a simple, transparent carbon tax, all individuals and businesses would be forced to take account the costs and benefits of their own decisions. Their own self-interest would lead them to choose the technologies that represented the optimal decisions in their specific situations.

While a carbon tax would raise revenue that could then be used to reduce other taxes, new alternative energy subsidies would require the overall level of taxation to be raised. This not only creates a political problem — the voters generally prefer lower taxes to higher taxes — but also an economic one. Current taxes on labor and investment income cause economic inefficiencies because they discourage work effort and saving, making society as a whole worse off. Thus, the true costs of a carbon tax would be lower — and the true costs of further subsidies would be higher — than the above-mentioned numbers once the deadweight losses caused by other forms of taxation are factored in.

Far more important than economic theory, though, is basic political reality. Public policy must take into account not only market failures — in this case the fact that anyone can currently dump greenhouse gas pollutants into the atmosphere for free — but also government failures. Unlike private individuals or companies, governments can exercise coercive powers over others. As such, special interest groups often seek to use these coercive powers towards their own ends.

Farm groups and energy companies — both renewable and non-renewable — give significant campaign contributions to both political parties. In return, they have been handsomely rewarded by the federal government in the form of various subsidies. Even if the “wise men” in government could efficiently allocate resources and the deadweight losses of taxation were negligible, the special interest groups that benefit from government subsidies have inevitably corrupted attempts to encourage “good” energy sources through these subsidies.

The same political problem applies to cap-and-trade. If permits were auctioned off, a cap-and-trade system would be little different from a carbon tax. But the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme, which started in 2005, and the cap-and-trade bill proposed in Congress did not auction of the permits. Instead, the permits were handed out for free to politically well-connected companies. Given this political reality, cap-and-trade represents the largest corporate welfare scheme in history.

A carbon tax would be much more difficult for special interest groups to hijack. Voters don’t seem to have a problem with coal companies receiving free cap-and-trade permits. On the other hand, how many people would tolerate a coal company being exempt from having to pay a carbon tax? Thus, not only is a carbon tax more efficient than renewable-energy subsidies, but it is much more difficult for special interest groups to hijack than subsidies or a cap-and-trade system. Ultimately, those who are concerned about climate change should argue for a carbon tax.

Louisiana’s beach water quality exceeded health standards only once — at one beach — over the last three years.

A total of 2,232 closing days were issued at 11 beaches across the state after the BP oil disaster, which began with the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig in April 2010.

Many beaches remained closed throughout 2011 because of oil washing ashore and continued cleanup efforts.

Other beaches were also recovering from hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005 and Gustav and Ike in 2008. Many beaches in Cameron Parish have not returned to pre-storm levels, while others are inaccessible.

Jacques Berry, Office of the Lieutenant Governor communications director, said beaches have recovered dramatically since the oil spill last year.

“The beaches are looking 100 percent better. Every once in a while a tar ball will show up on the beach, but the crews that helped clean the beaches did a great job,” said Berry. “The study only included two beaches out of the 7,500 miles of shoreline in Louisiana. … But it is true that we are still recovering from the worst man-made disaster in history.”

Tourism in Louisiana has naturally faced a setback this year.

“We are studying the trend,” Berry said. “Fourteen months after the spill we have recovered fairly well. There is still a regional interest in Louisiana beaches, but we need to attract a national interest again. We have to convince people that Louisiana is open for business.”

Beaches in other states are also suffering.

Bacterial pollution is increasing in beaches across the country. In 2010 the number of beach closings and advisories reached the second highest level in NRDC history at 24,091 closings.

From April 2010 until the study concluded on June 15, 2011, there have been a total of 9,474 days of oil-related beach notices, advisories and closures at Gulf Coast beaches.

Seventy-five percent of those closures are because of bacteria levels exceeding health standards.

High bacterial levels put swimmers at risk for waterborne illnesses.

According to the NRDC, illnesses associated with polluted beach water include skin rashes, pink eye, respiratory infections, meningitis, hepatitis and the stomach flu.

The Environmental Protection Agency, following pressure from the NRDC, has agreed to update its beach water quality standards by 2012 in order to keep up with increasing levels of contamination and further protect tourists.

The EPA is required to conduct studies and surveys, produce water tests with same-day results and protect beachgoers from a broad range of waterborne illnesses.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/07/08/in-oil-spill-aftermath-louisiana-beaches-ranked-among-americas-dirtiest/feed/0Study says birth defects and mining relatedhttp://uwire.com/2011/06/30/study-says-birth-defects-and-mining-related/
http://uwire.com/2011/06/30/study-says-birth-defects-and-mining-related/#commentsThu, 30 Jun 2011 17:01:26 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=24580According to a recent study by researchers at Washington State U. and West Virginia U., birth defects appear to be more common in areas of mountaintop coal mining and are on the rise as the practice becomes more common.

The study is based on an analysis of more than 1.8 million birth records between 1996 and 2003. The study compared the incidence of birth defects in mountaintop mining areas, other mining areas and areas without mining. The researchers were led by health economist and associate professor in WSU’s College of Pharmacy, Melissa Ahern. Research found 235 birth defects per 10,000 births where mountaintop mining is most common in four central Appalachian states. A rate almost double that of non-mining areas with a rate of 144 defects per 10,000.

Mountaintop mining has increased during the last few years, Ahern said. A higher demand for fuel has led to a 250-percent increase in mountaintop mining between 1985 and 2005.

“Residents of the region tend to have less education, less prenatal care, more smoking and more alcohol use during pregnancy,” Eric Sorensen said in a WSU news release on the topic. “After controlling for socioeconomic and behavioral risks, the researchers still found residents in mountaintop mining areas had significantly higher rates of birth defects.” According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), mountaintop mining has negative affects including many environmental factors.

“Mountaintop removal is a form of surface coal mining in which explosives are used to access coal seams, generating large volumes of waste that bury adjacent streams,” the EPA website said. “The resulting waste that then fills valleys and streams can significantly compromise water quality, often causing permanent damage to ecosystems and rendering streams unfit for swimming, fishing and drinking. It is estimated that almost 2,000 miles of Appalachian headwater streams have been buried by mountaintop coal mining.” Counties near mountaintop mining areas had higher rates of birth defects, Ahern said. Birth defects included circulatory/respiratory, central nervous system, musculoskeletal, gastrointestinal and urogenital defects. “Circulatory and respiratory effects really stood out,” Ahern said in a USA Today article. “These are costly to the health care system and involve a lot of human suffering. I would think public health officials would be interested.”

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/06/30/study-says-birth-defects-and-mining-related/feed/0Long Beach stores to ban plastic bag usehttp://uwire.com/2011/06/30/long-beach-stores-to-ban-plastic-bag-use/
http://uwire.com/2011/06/30/long-beach-stores-to-ban-plastic-bag-use/#commentsThu, 30 Jun 2011 15:50:15 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=24560Stores in Long Beach will be unable to distribute plastic bags to their customers and there will be a new charge for paper bags, beginning Aug. 1.

Stores with gross annual sales of $2 million or more and at least 10,000 square feet will be required to stop distributing plastic bags, according to longbeach.gov. Instead, stores will provide paper bags that must be 100 percent recyclable and made of at least 40 percent post-consumer recycled material.

The website also states that compostable and biodegradable plastic bags will be banned because of a lack of commercial composting facilities in the county.

“Under the ban, which is based on one that is going into effect this summer in unincorporated parts of Los Angeles County, the distribution of plastic bags would be prohibited at most grocery stores, pharmacies, convenience stores, supermarkets, farmers markets and other retail stores that sell food and similar items,” the Long Beach Press-Telegram reported.

“Heavier bags, such as those used by Target, wouldn’t be prohibited under the law,” it continued.

Stores offering recyclable paper bags will be required to charge 10 cents per bag in order to discourage shoppers from using paper bags as well, according to the Long Beach Press-Telegram.

According to the city’s offical website, longbeach.gov, some people perceive paper bags to be just as harmful to the environment as plastic bags because their production requires a greater amount of energy and they are the byproduct of trees.

Longbeach.gov encourages shoppers to purchase reusable bags, explaining they are worth the investment environmentally and financially.

The website states that “our reliance on plastics is changing our natural environment in profound ways, eliminating important creatures in our food chain and polluting a major life-sustaining source for generations to come.”

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/06/30/long-beach-stores-to-ban-plastic-bag-use/feed/0Agriculture dries up due to severe droughthttp://uwire.com/2011/06/09/agriculture-dries-up-due-to-severe-drought/
http://uwire.com/2011/06/09/agriculture-dries-up-due-to-severe-drought/#commentsThu, 09 Jun 2011 07:48:50 +0000editorhttp://uwire.com/?p=24378Texas is known for its hot climate, cattle and agriculture but this summer, most are experiencing the heat.

“For this time of year this seems to be the third worst drought I have ever seen in Texas,” said John Nielsen-Gammon, Texas state climatologist.

From November 2010 to June 2011, the loss Texas has experienced due to the drought has reached approximately 1.5 billion dollars, causing serious problems for crop and cattle farmers.

“Each day without rainfall is one in which crop and livestock losses mount,” said David Anderson, agrilife extension livestock economist. “Even with the severity of the current drought, estimation of economic losses is difficult given that we are still early in the growing season.”

The majority of southern and western Texas is experiencing “exceptional drought”, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, which is the highest drought rating you can receive along with New Mexico and parts of Arizona.

“Texas is the largest beef cow producing state in the U.S. with more than 5 million head,” Anderson said. “More than 90 percent of the state’s beef cows are located in counties categorized as being in severe to exceptional drought.”

The drought has caused the price of crops to rise, which causes increased feeding costs all while cattle farmers are losing acres of grazing pasture.

“This increased feeding cost over normal levels is a direct economic impact on the livestock producers,” Anderson said. “The sudden severe onset of the drought has forced livestock producers to purchase even more hay, driving up prices sharply.”

Many ranchers have started to feed their cattle much earlier in the season, and with a shortage of water for their cattle, it is an ongoing struggle throughout the state.

Many livestock owners have been forced to sell their cattle due to increasing costs and some produces have sold as much as half their livestock to keep from running a deficit.

For Texas crops, it is still an unknown in how much the drought will impact them. Many Texas famers have yet to plant their crops for this season and are waiting to see if the weather conditions become more favorable.

“However, for wheat, cotton and grain farmers in central and south Texas who have planted or are facing final planting deadlines, and ranchers supplemental feeding on short pastures, each day without rainfall is costly,” said Mark Welch, an agrilife extension grain marketing economist.

The window for crops to have a favorable chance of surviving this season is very unlikely with each passing day.

“The low harvested percentage is compounded by several factors in addition to the drought,” Welch said. “Record-high calf prices increase the value of wheat for grazing, especially if grain production prospects are poor, and record high cotton prices offer incentives for producers to terminate poor stands of wheat in hopes of producing a high value cotton crop.”

The drought has also taken its toll on homeowners and hobby famers, in which many have lost all their crops of the season, forcing them to deal with dry, cracked and unusable soil.

“Based on past droughts, it’s likely to get worse as the weather stays hot and chances of precipitation decrease. The less water people use, the less the need will be for putting in water restriction to conserve water this summer,” Nielsen-Gammon said.

Major cotton producers still have positive outlooks due to the uncertain conditions in west Texas.

“Given the regular occurrence of dry weather in west and south Texas, and the late planting date in west Texas, it’s not unusual to be facing uncertainty about the level and condition of cotton plantings in the state. As the west Texas crop is not usually planted until May, there’s still time for conditions to change,” said John Robinson, an agrilife extension cotton economist, said.

The conditions have yet to improve, and if the drought continues on in Texas, famers and livestock producers may be looking at a very dry situation.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/06/09/agriculture-dries-up-due-to-severe-drought/feed/0Farmers markets grow in popularity in Minneapolishttp://uwire.com/2011/06/08/farmers-markets-grow-in-popularity-in-minneapolis/
http://uwire.com/2011/06/08/farmers-markets-grow-in-popularity-in-minneapolis/#commentsWed, 08 Jun 2011 20:03:17 +0000editorhttp://uwire.com/?p=24367Terry Sias sold her baked goods out of a church parking lot Saturday morning in Northeast Minneapolis.

After spending 16 hours in her small St. Louis Park, Minn., kitchen baking brownies and other treats in preparation, she was just one vendor at the opening day of this year’s Northeast Farmers Market. She’s been coming to sell her home-baked goods at the market for four years.

“I just love to bake,” she said. “And when I heard that I could sell my own things here, I came right out.”

Increasingly, residents like Sias are taking their home-grown goods to farmers markets across Minneapolis. The city issued 33 permits for farmers markets in 2010 — up from 22 in 2009.

And recent city action could be a further boost.

The Minneapolis City Council passed the Urban Agriculture Plan in mid-April, updating the zoning code to provide citizens more opportunities to grow and sell their own food within the city.

The plan doesn’t have many direct implications for farmers markets, said Amanda Arnold, a city planner who helped draft the plan. But others are confident they’ll benefit from the increased visibility of locally grown foods.

David Nicholson, a consultant who works with farmers markets in the city, said by raising awareness of the benefits of homegrown foods, markets like the one in Northeast will benefit.

“It will raise the visibility of the local food system generally, and the importance of the local food system in creating a vibrant and sustainable community,” Nicholson said. “And farmers markets are a part of that too.”

Nicholson pointed to several markets at risk of losing their home. Because the city only provides permits for farmers markets to operate, the owner of the property has a say in whether they can be on their land.

Nicholson hopes that by raising their visibility, farmers markets will someday have a more permanent home.

Jill Thielen, who manages the University of Minnesota’s Farmers Market, said it requires vendors to grow their food near the Twin Cities. Much of the produce that makes it to the market was picked the same morning, she said.

“I think that’s kind of what people are looking for now,” Thielen said. “They’re looking for it for economic reasons, for convenience and for freshness.”

The University’s market is open Wednesdays from July 13 to Oct. 5 on Church Street.

Thielen added that while attendance and the number of vendors have increased at the University market, they are still trying to reach out to students. She said organizers hired a marketing intern this year and created a Facebook page to appeal to students.

Sias said more people want to know where their food comes from, and meeting their vendor face-to-face is the best way to do that.

“I know people here by name and they know me by name,” she said. “Communities embrace farmers markets.”

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/06/08/farmers-markets-grow-in-popularity-in-minneapolis/feed/0Column: Debunking the myth of domestic oil: All about the moneyhttp://uwire.com/2011/05/13/column-debunking-the-myth-of-domestic-oil-all-about-the-money/
http://uwire.com/2011/05/13/column-debunking-the-myth-of-domestic-oil-all-about-the-money/#commentsFri, 13 May 2011 23:39:57 +0000editorhttp://uwire.com/?p=24223In my last column, the unraveling of the domestic oil production myth began with the concept of a global oil market – companies beholden to no specific country – and the dominance of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

But the domestic oil production myth truly unwinds on a few other key points that proponents of domestic resources often pass over.

First is the amount of time between when a company receives its permit to begin production and the first drop of oil that is recovered.

According to the Energy Information Administration, it takes an average of around five years for an oil company that was just awarded a lease of reserve land to recover the first drop of oil. Why not ignore alternative sources for five more years, and hope for more oil? To call this procrastination would be an understatement.

Second, America generally doesn’t come close in total reserves compared to the rest of the world. Again according to the EIA, in 2009 the average amount of proven oil reserves within the United States was 21.7 billion barrels of oil. By comparison, Venezuela had 99.3 billion, Canada 178 billion, Europe 13.6 billion, Russia 60 billion, Africa 117 billion and the Middle East, collectively, is sitting on 745 billion.

But consider the possibility that one of the “super major” oil companies – all international producers – develops an interest in tapping America’s oil reserves either in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge or off shore. How much oil could America get?

On optimistic speculation by EIA’s analysis of “technically recoverable” amounts surveyed by geologists, it has been estimated that ANWR could produce about 876,000 barrels of oil each day. As of 2009, the U.S. produces 9 million barrels of oil a day, and consumes just over 18 million.

With a world market that consumes a total of about 86 million barrels a day according to data from 2007, ANWR’s recoverable amount accounts to just over 4 percent of our current domestic production, and barely 1 percent of world production. Certainly, the “super majors” are already lining up to get a hand in that.

Proponents for domestic production seem to skip over how negligible a contribution that tapping the ANWR oil reserves would make. Nine hundred thousand extra barrels – in 2025 nonetheless – does not make up any ground in efforts to reduce foreign dependency.

Finally, and most important of all the reasons to reduce foreign oil dependency the public would support, domestic production suggests that gas prices would be lowered. Unfortunately, again, it wouldn’t fix this problem either.

In a 2009 EIA report, “Impact of Limitations on Access to Oil and Natural Gas Resources in the Federal Outer Continental Shelf,” the EIA projected domestic crude oil production through 2030 based on historical and current data for production and reserve availability.

The report explores two options for the future of domestic oil production: the OCS “limited” case, where the currently suspended limits on the development of oil production in the Outer Continental Shelf are reinstated; and the OCS “access” case, which examines the “potentialimpacts of lifting of Federal restrictions on access to the OCS” in various parts of the U.S., such as those sites made available in 2008 when the moratoria was lifted. So it’s limited production versus possible production.

The EIA projected that crude oil production in the limited OCS case would be 6.83 million barrels per day by 2030, and gas prices would average $3.91 per gallon.

Now, for the access case – examining the great potential of domestic oil production by furthering utilization of the OCS – the EIA estimates that by 2030, 7.37 million barrels of oil would be produced per day, bringing the price of gas to $3.88 per gallon.

Just think, in under 20 years, by opening our “possible” OCS reserves we would save 3 cents a gallon! Rejoice, baby, rejoice! Domestic production makes gas cheap…er.

Within the remarks and the push to expand domestic oil production, one may hear arguments for reducing “foreign dependency,” “creating of American jobs,” relying on “American resources,” and so on. But never do you hear a proponent of domestic production directly state that gas prices will go down, or even remain steady. And rightfully so – as shown, more American oil does not truly mean lower American gas prices.

Despite the major downsides, domestic production does do one thing: create jobs. While environmental organizations dispute statistics handed out by petroleum-related coalitions – for example, the 9.2 million jobs related to petroleum industry estimated by the Petroleum Institute – it makes sense that more rigs and transportation would create more jobs.

Yet, on the other hand, the industry also has the power to destroy thousands of jobs, as seen in the British Petroleum oil spill. Furthermore these companies, as stressed within the aforementioned reasons, are international. Wouldn’t the labor be given to those who would take it for the cheapest salary?

Overall, the benefits of domestic production do not exist, or granted, are negligible. “Drill, baby, drill” is a myth. The concept is unrealistic, unprofitable and misleading. The power of domestic production lies purely in political gain, vying for a constituency that stands against the assumed expensive and inconvenient lifestyle changes that comes along with alternative energies.

The reasons given against domestic drilling don’t even touch upon the negative environmental aspects related to oil, and they don’t need to. Proponents of domestic production can be beaten at their own game; Politics, economics and social welfare – domestic production doesn’t better any of it.

We’ve been sold the need to reduce foreign oil for decades, yet nothing has happened. It’s fair to say it never will. Change will only come when global oil becomes scarce. When the resource becomes scarce, control becomes necessary. Consider when that day comes, and the U.S. is still dependent on it, would America then rethink alternative sources?

Eh, who cares? Let’s have the next generation deal with that issue.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/05/13/column-debunking-the-myth-of-domestic-oil-all-about-the-money/feed/0Iowa to receive high-speed rail fundinghttp://uwire.com/2011/05/10/iowa-to-receive-high-speed-rail-funding/
http://uwire.com/2011/05/10/iowa-to-receive-high-speed-rail-funding/#commentsTue, 10 May 2011 16:56:03 +0000editorhttp://uwire.com/?p=24200Iowa is set to receive more funding for high-speed rail equipment as part of $268 million in federal grants for train travel in Midwestern states.

The money will go toward purchasing 48 passenger rail cars and seven locomotives — all capable of traveling at 125 miles per hour — in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, and Missouri.

Some officials hope that the continued interest in Iowa rail travel as a whole will positively influence public and governmental support for the proposed line.

Gov. Terry Branstad deemed the rail line fiscally irresponsible, fearing low ridership. Officials said the rail could cost $3 million a year. Tim Albrecht, a spokesman for Branstad, said the chief executive would continue to monitor the situation and the Legislature’s decision.

“Ultimately, the responsibility lies with [the Legislature] and whether or not it decides to fund this project,” Albrecht said.

Sen. Bob Dvorsky, D-Coralville, the head of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said the recent federal funds require a $20 million match from the state over the next three or four years. The Senate hopes to include $6.5 million in the budget for fiscal 2013, he said.

The state needs the money to show the federal government it is interested in the match program, the senator said. And Dvorsky said he hopes the federal offering would help promote passenger rail in Iowa.

“I just hope it shows some momentum, that there is some support for passenger rail in Iowa,” he said.

It’s not yet clear how much of the funding will go to each state.

Rep. Dave Loebsack, D-Iowa, said passenger rail service from Iowa City to the Quad Cities or Chicago would ease travel for students, businesses, and families. The funding could go to areas hit by the economic downturn, the congressman said.

“I hope this funding, which provides a necessary investment in new locomotives and passenger cars, will help improve the Chicago-Quad Cities-Iowa City passenger rail corridor and spur ridership,” Loebsack said in a statement.

The grant is a fraction of $2 billion awarded by the U.S. Department of Transportation to improve high-speed rail travel in the Northeast, the Midwest, and California. The funds, originally earmarked for a high-speed rail line in Florida, became available after Florida Gov. Rick Scott rejected the federal funds.

In total, the Midwest is scheduled to receive $404.1 million to expand high-speed rail service, the press release said.

The Department of Transportation has provided $230 million for a new Amtrak route connecting Chicago, the Quad Cities, and Iowa City in October 2010.

The project is scheduled to be completed in 2015, according to a statement from Rep. Bruce Braley.
Kelly McCann, director of communications for the Iowa City Chamber of Commerce — whose members have long supported the project — said the Chamber is “delighted” the federal government is investing in Midwest passenger rail.

“This is another step in the right direction for the Iowa City to Chicago passenger rail route,” McCann said.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/05/10/iowa-to-receive-high-speed-rail-funding/feed/0Students work to promote sweatshop-free apparelhttp://uwire.com/2011/05/05/students-work-to-promote-sweatshop-free-apparel/
http://uwire.com/2011/05/05/students-work-to-promote-sweatshop-free-apparel/#commentsThu, 05 May 2011 07:30:38 +0000editorhttp://uwire.com/?p=24168Following in the footsteps of UCLA, A.S. Council unanmiously passed a resolution on May 4 requesting the UCSD bookstore promote sweatshop-free apparel.

UCLA passed its corresponding resolution after a demonstration by students in February; the school hopes to increase revenue to over $16,000. According to the Daily Bruin, other schools, like Duke University, have purchased over $200,000 worth of apparel.

UCSD has carried apparel from Alta Gracia — a company based in the Dominican Republic that pays higher wages (or “living” wages) to its workers instead of minimum wage — since last fall.

According to UCSD Bookstore Director Don Moon, the bookstore currently carries T-shirts and sweatshirts from Alta Gracia. Four types are women’s items and three types are men’s items. These items have been here since last fall and some of the women’s items have sold out this year.

“We are supportive of Alta Gracia, we think it’s a good cause and we have some plans for the fall, so we will see what happens,” he said.

Right now, the bookstore has a hang-tag in place to advertise the Alta Gracia story, but next year, they plan on having a branded area within the bookstore to promote the company.

“I’m caught off-guard [by the resolution] because I don’t think it’s necessary to propose one,” Moon said. “We are making every effort to bring in more product for the fall, so it surprises me.”

According to Moon, bookstore officials are mostly waiting for Alta Gracia’s selection and graphics to improve in order to gain more customer interest in the line.

The Worker Rights Consortium — a nonprofit organization that serves as independent labor watchdog organization — established the living wage of the Dominican Republic with the assistance of 180 affiliated universities.

According to the WRC, in the Dominican Republic, the legal minimum wage is $0.84 hourly in U.S. dollars. To meet basic needs of their families — including food, clean water, housing and healthcare — WRC determined that the living wage should be $2.83 in U.S. dollars. Alta Gracia pays its workers $9.62 hourly.

“The WRC’s mission is to ensure that university logo apparel is produced in factories where workers are paid a genuine living wage that is sufficient to support themselves and their families and enjoy respect for all other basic rights, as embodied in university codes of conduct,” WRC communications director Theresa Haas said.

According to Haas, there are approximately 350 campus stores that carry Alta Gracia’s product nationwide.

“Our hope for Alta Gracia is that the factory will continue to grow and will serve as a model for the rest of the apparel industry,” Haas said.

Muir College senior and co-chair of the Student Worker Collective — the group that proposed the resolution — Arianna Peregretti said the resolution is asking council to show it support.

“We are asking A.S. to support us in [the resolution] and to take the time to let the bookstore know that they are behind wanting to increase orders for the bookstore, community events, and conferences around campus,” Peregretti said.

Campuswide Senator Victor Flores-Osorio said he hopes council write a letter to bookstore management showing its support for Alta Gracia and other sweatshop-free apparel.

“When I ran for campuswide senator, one of my main platforms was social justice, and I see this as a way that UCSD can promote social justice,” he said. “I really doubt there will be much contention [surrounding the resolution] because this is a neutral resolution in that it promotes a clothing line and most people would agree that sweatshop-free is a good thing.”

Peregretti sees the effort to bring in Alta Gracia apparel as part of a national to make people more aware about their clothing origins.

“If you take the time to actually look up and beyond your schoolbooks and see things that actually affect the framework of our society, you will see that doing something so small like buying a sweater from Alta Gracia, you’re taking the initiative to say that there are more important things out there than myself,” Peregretti said.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/05/05/students-work-to-promote-sweatshop-free-apparel/feed/0Gallatin student uncovers the ugly side of cosmeticshttp://uwire.com/2011/05/05/gallatin-student-uncovers-the-ugly-side-of-cosmetics/
http://uwire.com/2011/05/05/gallatin-student-uncovers-the-ugly-side-of-cosmetics/#commentsThu, 05 May 2011 05:35:22 +0000editorhttp://uwire.com/?p=24153Changing an entire industry that is relatively unregulated is a daunting task. But Gallatin junior Jessica Assaf isn’t one to back down from a fight.

Last week, Assaf took on the cosmetics world, visiting various drug stores to paste stickers on Secret deodorant products, warnings about toxic chemicals. They read: “Warning: Toxic Hazard. Ingredients in this product have been linked to cancer, neurotoxicity and reproductive toxicity.”

But this is not the first time Assaf has spoken out.

At the age of 15, Assaf participated in an Environmental Working Group study that found 13 hormone-altering chemicals in Assaf’s blood and urine samples, including above-average levels of parabens — chemicals that have been linked to cancer and all from common cosmetic products she used. When she later learned that the Food and Drug Administration had no authority to require pre-market safety assessments for many of the products young women in American use everyday, Assaf began her campaign for change.

“I was furious,” Assaf said. “For someone who considers herself a ‘conscious consumer,’ I was outraged to realize that we are unknowingly being exposed to toxic chemicals because cosmetic manufacturers are not required to conduct safety testing or even disclose all of their ingredients on product packaging.”

Throughout high school, Assaf worked tirelessly to raise awareness of environmental health issues throughout California. She reached out to legislators and lobbied Congress. Spreading her focus to a number of different issues, she traveled to Ghana for a semester, working to create a documentary focusing on women who were HIV-positive. But turning back to environmental health, Assaf then helped to organize a picket outside Abercrombie and Fitch, targeting the toxins found in its signature perfume products.

Her efforts soon impressed many around her, including her Gallatin advisor, David Moore.

“I first became Jessica’s advisor in 2010,” Moore said. “And right away I was extremely impressed with her knowledge of issues [like] environmental health [and] the dynamics of social change. I’ve come to know that she is very driven to [make] a difference in the world, and I have the utmost respect for her.”

Along with these projects, Assaf began educating consumers through events and panel discussions with the Gallatin Green Team and her own organization, Teens Turning Green.

Working with the Yes Men, an organization dedicated to raising awareness of social issues, Assaf became inspired by the idea of direct action as the answer to many growing environmental issues.
“Since the 1960s there is much less of a societal emphasis on direct action as a form of activism,” she said. “We have really lost that action-based mentality, and I want to bring it back.”

Assaf began her NYC campaign last week with $20, a few other NYU students and some bright yellow warning stickers.

“I know what I did is illegal,” Assaf said. “But why should I act within the system if the system is enabling injustices like this to occur? If I really want to make a difference, I have to put my best interests aside and think about the bigger picture.”

Working with fellow film student Emma Thatcher, the small team is planning to complete “Body Burden,” a documentary that will bring attention to the harmful effects of prevalent toxins that exist in products young women use everyday.

“Jessica has so many connections, and working with her has been the easiest process,” Thatcher said. “I mean, just feeding off her passion and her work, I believe we can do this.”

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/05/05/gallatin-student-uncovers-the-ugly-side-of-cosmetics/feed/0New wave energy testing facility will be the only of its kind in the United Stateshttp://uwire.com/2011/05/03/new-wave-energy-testing-facility-will-be-the-only-of-its-kind-in-the-united-states/
http://uwire.com/2011/05/03/new-wave-energy-testing-facility-will-be-the-only-of-its-kind-in-the-united-states/#commentsTue, 03 May 2011 05:16:40 +0000editorhttp://uwire.com/?p=24143Oregon State University, in collaboration with the University of Washington, has chosen a new site for the wave energy program off the coast of Newport, which will be the only of its kind in the United States.

After research, development and many years of planning, this local testing site will be available to students and faculty.

“This new site is a testing ground,” said Dr. Ted Brekken, assistant professor in electrical engineering and computer sciences. “The location has already been permitted, the path has been cleared and it is ready for the new technology.”

Through the wave energy program, new technology will be tested in order to further the development of ocean waves into energy.

“Wave energy refers to the moving water particles that enable the technology that converts it into energy,” Brekken said. “This program initially started in the electrical engineering department and has now spread to a number of electrical, mechanical and civil engineering students, as well as marine biology students and faculty.”

The new testing site will primarily be used for the production and implementation of new technology and devices.

“Wave energy buoys will be tested with a few possible configurations,” said Annette von Jouanne, professor of electrical engineering. “For example, the wave energy developer could deploy a device and monitor its power generation using equipment contained within the device.”

Through this process, OSU has also been continuing its work with the Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy Center.

“This program was established, led by OSU in collaboration with the University of Washington,” von Jouanne said. “NNMREC will be able to help the wave energy developers test, advance and optimize their technologies, including answering important environmental and social questions.”

Not only will this new site benefit the wave energy program and academic research here at Oregon State, but the local area will also be affected.

“This site development will be good for the technology, but for the local community as well,” Brekken said. “Since this is a testing site and isn’t necessarily permanent, we have been in working with the Newport fishing community in terms of development.”

Newport has been known as a fishing town since the 1870s. Today, this area has become a tourist attraction, as well as an increasingly busy harbor.

“We have spent years collaborating with the ocean community, including fisherman, crabbers and recreation to find a low-impact site for them, and that would be suitable for wave energy developers,” von Jouanne said. “Overall, efforts have included building strong support for wave energy at the state and federal levels, in addition to building essential collaborations with the industries, utilities and the community.”

Discussions have been ongoing for two years with the local community and how they will be affected by this new research facility to ensure the testing facility is handled appropriately.

“The site will not necessarily be off limits to other ocean users,” said Kaety Hildenbrand, a marine fisheries faculty member with Oregon Sea Grant. “As part of our continuing outreach to the coastal community, we plan to have a series of dialogues with safety experts and ocean users to discuss allowable uses.”

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/05/03/new-wave-energy-testing-facility-will-be-the-only-of-its-kind-in-the-united-states/feed/0North Carolina, U.S. Department of Transportation agreement allocates $461 million to enhance rail systemhttp://uwire.com/2011/04/26/north-carolina-u-s-department-of-transportation-agreement-allocates-461-million-to-enhance-rail-system/
http://uwire.com/2011/04/26/north-carolina-u-s-department-of-transportation-agreement-allocates-461-million-to-enhance-rail-system/#commentsWed, 27 Apr 2011 02:21:43 +0000editorhttp://uwire.com/?p=24076An agreement between the North Carolina and U.S. departments of transportation provided the state with $461 million to enhance the rail system and construction will affect Alamance County.

“Railroad construction will make Piedmont North Carolina closer to the Northeast, to New York, Washington and Boston in peoples’ minds, as well as in time to get there,” said Tom Tiemann, economics professor at Elon University.

The agreement contributes to President Barack Obama’s vision for a high-speed rail system that will connect 80 percent of the population, according to a press release issued by the U.S. Department of Transportation.

A portion of the federal funding will be used to construct a railroad between Charlotte and Raleigh.

“It is a step in the incremental project that connects Charlotte with Washington and all the way up to New York and Maine,” said Patrick Simmons, NCDOT rail division director.

The project will create 4,800 jobs related to the railway construction and enhance the state’s prestige with respect to economic and industrial growth, Simmons said.

“It will connect North Carolina with the richest, most productive part of the country,” Tiemann said.

Although the high-speed rail project enables North Carolina to become more closely associated with production in the Northeast, Simmons also sees the project as an opportunity to facilitate economic growth within the state.

“The public investment is an economic development tool that has been used for centuries to help stimulate the economy,” he said.

The construction of a high-speed rail connecting Charlotte and Raleigh particularly benefits North Carolina residents, Simmons said, as 60 percent of North Carolina’s economic and population growth will occur between Raleigh and Charlotte.

“It’s where our people live, it’s where our economy is, it’s where our growth is going to occur,” he said.

With the federal funding, the state plans to complete 24 projects throughout 11 counties. Projects in Alamance County include a realignment of the railroad tracks from Graham to Haw River and an extension to the Burlington train station platform.

“Technically speaking, North Carolina is now the seventh largest state in the country in terms of population and it’s going to add 4.5 million people by 2030,” Simmons said. “This project helps us prepare for that and ensure long term mobility for commerce and citizens.”

The railroad track construction will eliminate a 22-mile bottleneck and increase train speed from 55 mph to approximately 79 mph. The Burlington Station platform extension will allow all passengers to board without repositioning the train, reducing travel time as well.

“Modernizing our highway and railroad infrastructure will better prepare us for when the economy returns,” Simmons said.

Individuals who ride the passenger trains will have more travel opportunities, which is characteristic of a more robust transportation network, he said.

“Those that don’t use the train will still see improved safety and mobility through safety projects, and the economy will recover just an ‘nth’ degree faster because we have made investments in our infrastructure that have not occurred anywhere else in the region,” Simmons said.

The construction of a dozen bridges will also improve safety, according to Simmons. Bridges would elevate the street level, eliminating the number of crossing collisions between cars and trains.

The improved transportation network and increased job opportunities will contribute to North Carolina’s economic growth, he said.

The construction projects will also directly create 4,800 jobs throughout the state, according to Simmons.

“The economy will recover just an nth degree faster because we have made investments in our infrastructure that have not occurred anywhere else in the region,” Simmons said.

Nevertheless, Tiemann predicts the economic benefits will influence more than those directly employed for the construction projects.

But Tiemann predicts the economic benefits will influence more than those directly employed for the construction projects.

“It’s the multiplier effect,” he said. “Every dollar you spend on this, if you look at it nationally, causes $1.50 or $2 expenditure somewhere else.”

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/04/26/north-carolina-u-s-department-of-transportation-agreement-allocates-461-million-to-enhance-rail-system/feed/0Vanderbilt receives ‘A’ rating on new environmental reporthttp://uwire.com/2011/04/22/vanderbilt-receives-%e2%80%98a%e2%80%99-rating-on-new-environmental-report/
http://uwire.com/2011/04/22/vanderbilt-receives-%e2%80%98a%e2%80%99-rating-on-new-environmental-report/#commentsFri, 22 Apr 2011 17:09:41 +0000editorhttp://uwire.com/?p=24040CLAREMONT, Calif. –– Vanderbilt University received an “A” rating and was one of the top five universities recognized in a recently released analysis of environmental and social sustainability transparency.

Using data collected during the spring of 2010 from university websites and other voluntary reporting initiatives, the Roberts Environmental Center (REC) at Claremont McKenna College analyzed the 50 top national universities. The study examines voluntary environmental and social intent; reporting, and performance by national universities utilizing criteria such as financial transparency, institutional vision, environmental policies and management; community engagement; air emissions reporting; recycling; utilities management; employee safety; green building and green purchasing.

Student researchers working on the report noted that large universities in the United States have “dramatically increased the extent to which they address sustainability, since last scored by the Roberts Center three years ago.”

The Sustainability and Environmental Management Office (SEMO) at Vanderbilt has worked hard to communicate Vanderbilt’s current environmental performance and management system to not only the Vanderbilt community but also the local and national community as well.

“We have a robust online presence, including our SustainVU website and Facebook page, ThinkOne Energy Conservation website, Environmental Health and Safety website and our publicly available Greenhouse Gas inventories and Environmental Commitment Statement,” said Andrea George, director of SEMO. “This report acknowledges our objectives as well as our results and the extent to which they have been shared with the Vanderbilt community and the broader public.”

Vanderbilt performs particularly well in categories that evaluate environmental and social sustainability intent. University policies and commitments to environmental protection, diversity, environmentally and socially responsible procurement, and employee safety helped propel Vanderbilt to being the No. 1 ranked university in the country in “environmental intent” and “social intent” factors, receiving a perfect score of 100 for social intent.

“Many university websites represent the institution as being responsible when it comes to sustainability, but oftentimes the materials and information on the website do not provide evidence of that, therefore giving them lower scores,” conclude the study’s researchers.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/04/22/vanderbilt-receives-%e2%80%98a%e2%80%99-rating-on-new-environmental-report/feed/0EcoCar drives Earth Day celebrationhttp://uwire.com/2011/04/22/ecocar-drives-earth-day-celebration/
http://uwire.com/2011/04/22/ecocar-drives-earth-day-celebration/#commentsFri, 22 Apr 2011 07:37:29 +0000editorhttp://uwire.com/?p=24036It is easy to talk about going green, but this Earth Day, the Ohio State EcoCar team and 83 Gallery are giving people a chance to experience a sustainable lifestyle at a hands-on event.

Today from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m., 83 Gallery in the Short North will host the Ohio State EcoCar team, its car, and an array of environmentally conscious produced artwork to celebrate Earth Day. A reception will be held at the gallery featuring live music, hors d’oeurves and champagne.

83 Gallery is an independent art gallery located at 1038 N. High St. Their mission according to their website, 83gallery.com is “to create innovative connections between talented artists and potential patrons, while enriching and influencing our community in the process.”

The gallery is hosting the Earth Day reception to showcase environmentally conscious artwork and highlight the OSU EcoCar team’s commitment to creating and maintaining a healthy and sustainable environment.

The EcoCar team at Ohio State is involved in an advanced three-year collegiate vehicle technology engineering competition established by the United States Department of Energy and General Motors, Abbey Underwood, outreach coordinator and fourth-year marketing major, said.

“The competition challenges 16 universities across North America to reduce the environmental impact of vehicles by minimizing the vehicle’s fuel consumption and reducing its emissions while retaining the vehicle’s performance, safety and consumer appeal,” Underwood said.

“Students use a real-world engineering process to design and integrate their advanced technology solutions into a GM-donated vehicle.”

Admission to the event is free, but door contributions and proceeds of artwork sales go to a local charity. Commission will be used to purchase new tires for The Waste Not Center’s cargo van.

The Waste Not Center is a local charity established more than 20 years ago. WNC recycles excess supplies donated by individuals and businesses to teachers, artists and non-profit organizations at the cost of a membership fee.

According to Neil Drobny, general manager of WNC, memberships can cost anywhere from $45 for students, $75 for individuals to $295 a year for an entire school.

“We are reaching a whole new audience through a different type of communication,” Underwood said. “We are not just going out there and speaking with consumers about the environmental impacts that vehicles have on the environment. We are allowing the consumer to get involved and through art depict what sustainability and the environment means to them, something we have never done before.

“Students from the Ohio State EcoCar team reached out to the WNC,” Drobny said. “We had never heard of the 83 Gallery or the team before this. They offered to donate proceeds to us and our van, which is good because we don’t receive enough help from organizations such as these.”

The EcoCar team will end its third year of competition in June where its car will be tested at GM’s Milford Proving Grounds.

WNC has roughly 2,200 members and estimates it receives and put out more than 2,500 pounds of materials a week.

The car will make an appearance at the event today and be on exhibit at 83 Gallery through May 1.

More than 1,000 students and community members attended the semester’s final event of the McCombs VIP Distinguished Speakers Series.

The oil tycoon started Mesa Petroleum in 1956, which eventually grew into one of the largest independent production companies in the world. He currently works in the investment sector and founded BP Capital, an energy investment corporation.

Pickens has a net worth of $1.4 billion, and Forbes ranked him as the 880th richest person in world. He has been a major contributor to Texas politics by donating more than $5 million to political campaigns, most of which went to special interest groups.

McComb’s Dean Thomas Gilligan interviewed Pickens, who answered questions ranging from his childhood to the importance of domestic energy sources.

During the discussion, he revealed the best advice he ever received, courtesy of his grandmother.

“She once said ‘Sonny, someday everybody has to sit on their own bottom,’” Pickens said. “At first, I didn’t know what this meant. But this has come back very clearly for me. It means that nobody can do things for you, you have to do things for yourself.”

When asked what caused him to stand out among his peers, Pickens said his work ethic was vital in his success. His first job was a paper route, earning a cent for every paper he sold.

“Work ethic is number one,” Pickens said. “My work ethic, which came from my mother’s side, made the difference in my career.”

Pickens said he is passionate about improving the United State’s usage of energy resources and utilizing oil alternatives. He released “The Pickens Plan” in 2008, a proposal to update U.S. energy resource usage. The proposal encourages the U.S. to ween itself off its dependence on foreign oil. The U.S. imports 13 million barrels of oil every day, Pickens said.

“We have to use our own resources, that’s what I want to change,” he said.

Business freshman Ricky Quach was inspired by Pickens’ values and strength of character.

“I really enjoyed how he spoke about the importance of the values he learned when he was younger,” Quach said. “It’s amazing that what he learned from his parents and grandmother still affects him today.”

Michael Walsh, vice president of marketing and social media at AtticDr.com, an energy efficiency upgrade company located in Austin, was not as impressed by Pickens’ talk.

“I think his talk was kind of folksy,” Walsh said. “I was expecting a lot more substance, maybe charts and graphs. I was hoping for more specific information about renewable initiatives and energy efficiency as part of the equation.”

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/04/19/oil-tycoon-discusses-alternative-fuels/feed/0‘Carbon Nation’ expresses environmental waste concernshttp://uwire.com/2011/04/15/%e2%80%98carbon-nation%e2%80%99-expresses-environmental-waste-concerns/
http://uwire.com/2011/04/15/%e2%80%98carbon-nation%e2%80%99-expresses-environmental-waste-concerns/#commentsFri, 15 Apr 2011 16:53:57 +0000editorhttp://uwire.com/?p=23960Every year, people consume 16 terawatts of energy a year around the world. One terawatt is one trillion watts. An average American household goes through 11,000 kilowatts of this energy by itself.

“Carbon Nation,” shown Thursday at Ragtag Cinema, is a film addressing energy waste and encourages audience members to examine whether their lifestyles are sustainable.

City of Columbia Sustainability Manager Barbara Buffaloe, along with other environmentally-concerned colleagues, presented the movie, which was followed by a panel of academic leaders and students.

Buffaloe has been devoted to reducing the community’s carbon footprint and wanted to use this film to bring the issue of sustainability to light in Columbia.

The film, directed by Peter Byck, was a portrayal of the status of the climate, what society is doing to help it and what the world needs to do to make the environment a cleaner place.

The film emphasized the effects of America’s reliance on foreign oil and dwindling fossil fuels.

“When I lived in Florida, I would say drill, drill, drill,” Sabot6 Inc. CEO Daniel Nolan said. “If oil’s the problem, then maybe it’s not the answer. We have to release ourselves from the tether of oil.”

The film outlined several alternative fuel sources that could help the process of sustainability, including wind power, biofuel, geothermal fuel (heating water for energy), electric transportation and algae fuel.

Cliff Etheredge, partner at Peal Wind LLC in Roscoe, Texas, runs the largest wind farm in the world and was interviewed for the film. Local landowners benefit from the wind turbines by being paid for the electricity produced by the turbines on their land, he said.

The film also described environmental effects that are rooted in American society, like cars and houses.

In the film, Kristina Kershner described her organization, Architecture 2030, which encourages politicians and powerful leaders to employ sustainable building practices.

The film explained that sustainability within the house can trickle down to cracks in windows and poor insulation—families can lose hundreds of dollars a year from these unnoticeable damages.

The film also described how being sustainable can bridge socioeconomic borders, since it is a universal problem.

“The film highlights the possibilities for win-win technologies,” McCann said. “I liked how they brought in people who aren’t just the stigmatized hippy environmentalist.”

Borgelt said several of his fellow colleagues are teaching or planning on teaching courses on environmental issues. He said it is good for students, as future leaders, to learn about powering America in ways like this.

“In Columbia, the issue is that we need the demand for energy change,” Buffaloe said. “What we’re interested in is how to let the audience know how much they really need it.”

This was the first study to explore the physical effect of freeway pollution on brain cells.

In the study mice were exposed to a synthetic combination of floating freeway matter. The mice were exposed for up to 15 hours per week, which is similar to the experience of L.A. commuters, who may spend up to three hours per day on the freeway.

The results were the same for neurons in test tubes as in the live mice: brain cells showed damage to learning and memory, signs of premature aging and stunted cell growth.

“ You can’ t see them, but they are inhaled and have an effect on brain neurons that raises the possibility of long-term brain health consequences of freeway air,” Finch told the Los Angeles Times.

The pollutive particles may be invisible, but the health risk is still readily apparent to USC students.

“When I came to L.A. from NorCal I immediately noticed the difference in air quality,” said Alicia Anguiano, a junior majoring in political science and history. “Sometimes going north on the 110 towards downtown I can’ t even see the skyline — it’ s covered in smog. And I just think, it can’ t be healthy for kids to grow up in this environment.”

Solutions to the problem are hard to find, according to Finch, because even if we decrease the local concentration of these particles, we live in a larger environment that contributes to the pollution anyway.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/04/12/study-finds-damaging-effects-of-freeway-pollution/feed/0Campaign aims to sever link between subsidized farming, obesityhttp://uwire.com/2011/04/12/campaign-aims-to-sever-link-between-subsidized-farming-obesity/
http://uwire.com/2011/04/12/campaign-aims-to-sever-link-between-subsidized-farming-obesity/#commentsTue, 12 Apr 2011 04:35:27 +0000editorhttp://uwire.com/?p=23919With its goal to end the negative impact of federally assisted farming, New Jersey Public Interest Research Group (NJPIRG) launched yesterday its “Stop Subsidizing Obesity” campaign at Brower Commons on the College Avenue campus.

NJPIRG’s campaign focuses on ending federal subsidies of corn and soy to large factory farms, as NJPIRG campus organizer Katryn Fraher said this causes production of cheap unhealthy foods consumers choose over healthy choices.

“This amount of consumption has contributed a lot to the obesity epidemic, which has quadrupled in the last 40 years,” said Gideon Weissman, program associate for NJPIRG.

The abundant production of corn leads to a greater production of corn syrup, allowing unhealthy food to be sold cheaper than healthy alternatives, he said.

“[Subsidies] make it cheaper to sell Twinkies instead of carrots,” Fraher said.

Ankur Chauhan, event organizer, said consuming these products could lead not just to obesity but also to other health issues.

“When these children grow up, they won’t have a lot of nutrition in their body, which means that they will have a lot of deficiencies,” said Chauhan, School of Arts and Sciences junior. “Deficiencies in their eyes, liver and other organs will cause problems for them in the future.”

Chauhan cited the danger of having too much sugar, like high fructose corn syrup, in a diet.

“Too much sugar can lead to heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes,” he said.

During NJPIRG’s launch, people played a version of the game “The Price is Right,” and members collected signatures to garner more public support and raise awareness on the issue, Fraher said.

“I plan on going to med school and if I can help control this issue now, then it won’t proceed any further when I become a doctor,” Chauhan said.

Weissman said he did not believe there were any strong arguments supporting subsidies on agriculture.

“Subsidies had a use when they were first implemented 30 to 40 years ago, but now they’re just overused,” he said.

Weissman said the argument supporting how subsidies help small farmers was incorrect.

“Ninety percent of agricultural subsidies go to big factory farms and not to local farmers,” he said.

Fraher said she recognizes buying food is a personal choice but believes many people do not have that option.

For instance, Fraher cited wasteful subsidies given in past years, like when Domino’s Pizza received $12 million to advertise their cheesier pizza.

“These subsidies are federal subsidies, it’s basically taxpayer money,” Chauhan said. “It’s being used to allow Oreos to be cheaper than bananas.”

Weissman said he believes cutting subsidies would be more beneficial than cutting spending on what people need like federal Pell grants and food and water inspections.

“The recent budget compromise, H.R. [House Bill] 1 included some cuts, but it’s not enough for us to be happy,” he said.

Weissman said the timeliness of discussion in Congress about reducing government spending benefited NJPIRG’s cause.

“The campaign makes sense right now because we want to cut spending,” he said. “We have a great opportunity to cut these unhealthy subsidies right now.”

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/04/12/campaign-aims-to-sever-link-between-subsidized-farming-obesity/feed/0Seeds of Change endorses locally grown crops in New York Cityhttp://uwire.com/2011/04/11/seeds-of-change-endorses-locally-grown-crops-in-new-york-city/
http://uwire.com/2011/04/11/seeds-of-change-endorses-locally-grown-crops-in-new-york-city/#commentsMon, 11 Apr 2011 19:54:04 +0000editorhttp://uwire.com/?p=23904New York City may not seem to be an ideal location to harvest organic crops, but a new initiative from Seeds of Change is trying to change that common perception.

Seeds of Change’s “Sowing Millions” project distributed 100 million seeds within 48 hours last week to large-scale farmers and community gardeners across the United States. With help from the New York Restoration Project, 2.5 million of those seeds went to gardeners in the city.

But it’s not all just about seeds — “Sowing Millions” is a project that is part of a much larger wave of promoting environmentalism in an urban setting. It’s about beekeeping and honey, too; about building “loop houses,” or simplified versions of greenhouses; and about finding as many ways as possible to push a grassroots environmental movement in an industrial city and nation. The project is made up of groups of young people as well as volunteers who jump-start the urban farms that are gaining popularity across the city.

Jimmy Owens, the corporate development manager of the New York Restoration Project, worked closely with Seeds of Change on the project and said the 2.5 million seeds reached 700 gardens and 10,000 community gardeners in the five boroughs.

If you think that it’s impossible to find gardens, just look up: Communities are using rooftops to sow these seeds. Fahima Islam, a CAS environmental studies major, said the initiative to encourage local farming is both healthy and efficient for New Yorkers.

“Rooftops, empty lots and abandoned warehouses all go to waste otherwise,” she said.
The Eagle Street Rooftop Farm, for example, is a 6,000-square-foot vegetable garden in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, with a beautiful view of the Manhattan skyline. Brooklyn Grange, another rooftop garden in Long Island City, sells vegetables to local businesses to provide jobs and improve the overall quality of life in the city.

“It is easier than you would think to grow your own food in New York,” Owens said. He added that even in the low-income neighborhoods that NYRP serves, “the people would gladly spend the extra money for these gardens.”

According to their website, Seeds of Change was founded in 1989 to make organic seeds available to farmers and gardeners. Today, the company supplies a large number of certified organic foods in order to merge the values of taste and sustainability.

Alli Shepherd, an RA in NYU’s Green House, said day-to-day behaviors, like recycling and participating in community gardening, can make a difference.

“If I had space here, I would definitely grow my own food,” she said.

Many people in the greater New York community have also embraced organic farming and community gardening.

“Space is maxed out,” Owens said, noting that some of NYRP’s most popular gardens host communities of 60 to 70 people while some even have waiting lists. “People are excited about growing their own food. They want to do it themselves.”

“We know it is the right thing to do,” said Kris Klinger, director of USC Hospitality. “We already decided that going cage-free was something that needed to happen and when USC ALIVE started petitioning, it just confirmed what we already knew and planned to do.”

USC Always Living In View of the Environment, an environmental student group, launched a campaign in November encouraging the university to serve only eggs from cage-free farms. According to USC ALIVE, residence halls currently serve students eggs from battery-cage farms where hens are kept in small, unsanitary cages.

More than 4,300 students signed the online petition, according to Connie Gao, a sophomore majoring in business administration and the group’s director of External Communications.

“This is something that is obviously very important to environmentally conscious students and soon all students who live on campus will have the option to choose cage-free eggs which is a very environmentally friendly choice,” Gao said.

Stanford, UCLA and several other universities in California already serve eggs from cage-free farms, which allow hens to roam and eat grass.

According to Klinger, eggs from cage-free farms possess dark yellow yokes This can add nutritional value to the egg.

Having cage-free eggs is both an animal rights issue and an environmental one because battery-cages can raise the risk of salmonella. Raising hens in battery-cages is also a high pollutant because of the lack of cleanliness, which leads to the spread of diseases, according to Gao.

“It’s about time,” said Richelle Gribble, a sophomore majoring in fine arts. “USC has not exactly made huge leaps compared to other colleges as far as becoming more environmentally conscious, so this cage-free switch is a huge improvement.”

Klinger a said buying these eggs imposes a significant cost on the university — $60,000 a year. Hospitality chose not to raise meal plan prices because of the cage-free initiative, however, so the university will absorb the expense, Klinger said.

“$60,000 is enough money to pay the salaries of three full-time employees so we had to move funds around to pay for the switch and retain all of our staff,” Klinger said.

Elsa O’Callaghan, a senior majoring in communications, said she is concerned many students fail to recognize how important the cage-free switch is for promoting animal rights and environmental sustainability.

“I consider myself someone who is really environmentally-conscious and I had no idea USC was going cage-free until right now,” O’Callaghan said. “I’m very happy USC is doing this, but honestly I don’t think many students will take notice.”

USC already serves eggs from cage-free farms at Moreton Fig, Seeds Marketplace and other retail establishments on-campus, Klinger said, adding that he has not seen a significant difference in students’ dining habits.

“For students to appreciate the cage-free switch, the university has to fully publicize it, and also educate students so they know what cage-free means because most students don’t know the difference between a cage-free egg and a regular one,” O’Callaghan said.

Gribble said although the physical difference might be subtle, the cage-free initiative assures students the eggs they eat are healthy and come from hens living in relatively humane circumstances.

“Just knowing where your food comes from is really comforting,” Gribble said. “USC listened to those students concerned about animal rights but this switch is not just a victory for them but also a victory for the entire student body.”

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/03/28/usc-dining-halls-plan-to-serve-cage-free-eggs/feed/0Column: Reducing meat intake is proven to improve overall healthhttp://uwire.com/2011/03/25/column-reducing-meat-intake-is-proven-to-improve-overall-health/
http://uwire.com/2011/03/25/column-reducing-meat-intake-is-proven-to-improve-overall-health/#commentsFri, 25 Mar 2011 19:59:04 +0000editorhttp://uwire.com/?p=23747Raised as a Catholic in the metropolitan area of New Orleans, I accepted that I would be asked to forego meat every Friday during Lent.

Ever since its discovery in 1839 by Dutch chemist Gerhard Mulder, protein, specifically animal protein, has been considered the nutritional centerpiece in our diets — trumping fat, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals.

Derived from the Greek word proteios, “of prime importance,” the link between protein, good health and affluence has been culturally ingrained in Western society.

Meat has become the “soul” of most of our meals, and without it, our diets seemingly revert to pre-civilization drivel.

Under this deep-seated mindset, I viewed the absence of meat on Fridays during Lent as a sacrifice worthy of lamentation.

It was not until the passing of my grandmother from colon cancer during my early teens that I began to consider the correlation between animal protein consumption and various forms of cancer.

As rudimentary as my understanding of science was, I was convinced I could decrease any predisposition for colon cancer by increasing my intake of dietary fiber, a common notion in modern medicine.

However, I dismissed the diets of vegetarians and vegans as extreme, nutritionally deficient and misguided.

But my mind was still open to any information further predicating the idea of greater health through increased consumption of plant-based foods and decreased consumption of animal-based products.

It was with this open mind that I fell upon the work of Colin Campbell, a decorated biochemist who has arguably conducted the most provocative nutritional and dietary research to date.

Although Campbell follows what could be considered a vegan diet, he has never promoted himself as either a vegetarian or a vegan, as he does not identify with the animal rights movement.

As grossly detailed in his 2006 book “The China Study,” his mission is the improvement of human health and life.

For this very reason, his 27 years of extensive research has become incredibly attractive to me, as I can relate to his humanitarian goals.

His work originated through encounters with the impoverished and malnourished children of the Philippines, and his efforts to close what was known as the “protein gap” in the developing world.

Universities and health institutions across the world made it their mission to nurse these children back to health through what was deemed the most effective manner — increasing their animal protein intake.

Undeniably, the most common affliction throughout the Philippines was liver cancer, caused by a carcinogen known as aflatoxin.

Disturbingly, it soon became clear to Campbell that the children who were affected by liver cancer were part of the best-fed families and received the most animal protein in their diets.

Campbell used this intriguing observation as the groundwork for decades of experiments using both rodent and human cell lines to determine what was the cause of this animal protein-cancer correlation.

Shockingly, Campbell found when higher than necessary animal protein levels were consumed in conjunction with common carcinogens, the expression of cancer was increased exponentially.

What is higher than necessary?

Campbell’s book describes a diet of 10 percent protein (animal or plant) as necessary for growth, whereas

Americans consume 15 to 16 percent on average.

His findings suggest that chemical carcinogens do not generally cause cancer unless we consume these higher levels of animal protein, which promote and foster tumor development.

Soy, wheat and other forms of plant protein were never shown to have this effect.

In fact, his nutritional research concisely details how the intake of animal protein contributes to the onset of diabetes, heart failure and other chronic diseases.

I am not a vegetarian, but I now choose to limit my intake of animal food products.

And as inconvenient as Campbell’s findings seem to be, it would be intellectually dishonest for me to completely ignore their implications.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/03/25/column-reducing-meat-intake-is-proven-to-improve-overall-health/feed/0Missouri nuclear power plant quakeproof, officials sayhttp://uwire.com/2011/03/22/missouri-nuclear-power-plant-quakeproof-officials-say/
http://uwire.com/2011/03/22/missouri-nuclear-power-plant-quakeproof-officials-say/#commentsTue, 22 Mar 2011 23:00:53 +0000editorhttp://uwire.com/?p=23693Amid growing concerns over the safety of nuclear energy use in the United States, Missouri officials say the nuclear power plant in Callaway County would remain safe and operational in the case of a natural disaster.

Callaway Nuclear Development Manager Scott Bond believes the Callaway County nuclear plant would not be affected by an earthquake in the way three of Japan’s plants have been affected in the last couple weeks.

“The plant there successfully withstood the earthquake,” Bond said. “It was the tsunami that compromised their safety equipment.”

Bond said the Callaway plant is built 300 feet above the Missouri River, which would ensure it could not affect the plant.

The Callaway plant is built to withstand the natural disasters prevalent in Missouri, Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. said.

“Our reactor at the Callaway plant is a different kind of reactor than Japan,” McCaskill said in a radio conference call Wednesday. “We believe that ours is much safer because of that, and it has been built to withstand earthquakes.”

The New Madrid seismic zone is located partially in southeast Missouri. This fault system was responsible for large, destructive earthquakes in 1811 and 1812. There has not been any major activity since then, but scientists are unsure if activity along the fault could resume.

Most earthquakes take place along the boundaries of tectonic plates. Eric Sandvol, MU Assistant Professor of Geological Sciences, described tectonic plates as moving jigsaw puzzle pieces which make up the Earth.

Missouri is in the middle of the North American plate, making it a very strange location for an earthquake. According to Sandvol, scientists are unable to use many of their usual methods in order to predict when an earthquake is going to occur.

“When you have reputable scientists, who are publishing and actively studying in the field, and if there’s a very vigorous debate, you know probably, we don’t understand it all that well,” Sandvol said.

This lack of knowledge makes it hard to know how much, if any, precaution should be taken.

“It probably wouldn’t be, in my mind, the most prudent thing to say that we’re done with earthquakes and that we don’t have to worry about them,” Sandvol said. “But it’s a balance, because preparing for earthquakes costs money, lots of money,”

The radioactive material at the plant is stored with three separate levels of protection.

The material itself is stored in metal tubes which are contained in a reactor vessel that is 8 inches thick and can withstand more than 2,200 pounds of pressure. That vessel is contained in a concrete building with walls 4-feet thick.

“It’s actually designed to hold pressure as well, the most pressure that could ever be generated in an accident in that building,” Bond said.

According to Bond, the plant was designed to fit the rigorous guidelines put in place by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in order to withstand worst-case natural disasters.

“On top of that, employees have detailed procedures to deal with those type of events and events that would be beyond the design basis of the plant to ensure that the public is protected,” Bond said.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/03/22/missouri-nuclear-power-plant-quakeproof-officials-say/feed/0Madison finds widespread chromium-6 trace levels in drinking waterhttp://uwire.com/2011/03/22/madison-finds-widespread-chromium-6-trace-levels-in-drinking-water/
http://uwire.com/2011/03/22/madison-finds-widespread-chromium-6-trace-levels-in-drinking-water/#commentsTue, 22 Mar 2011 07:13:27 +0000editorhttp://uwire.com/?p=23689While recents tests on Madison’s public drinking water found that a cancer-causing contaminant is present in a majority of the city’s water wells, city officials are urging residents not to be alarmed.

Joseph Grande, water quality manager for Madison’s Water Utility, said the city tested all of the wells currently in operation and found only three did not contain trace levels of chromium-6.

Grande said there is no federal requirement for cities to test for the contaminant in drinking water but said the city decided to further evaluate the water’s level after an independent organization found traces during a study earlier this year.

“There is no requirement to test for chromium-6, but in recent months there has been a concern that there may be some cancer-causing effects due to the ingestion of chromium-6 in drinking water,” Grande said. “The Environmental Protection Agency and other federal agencies are currently evaluating the effects.”

Grande said Madisonians should not be alarmed by the recent findings because the chromium-6 levels will most likely fall below new federal health safety limits, which will be implemented in the coming months.

Only two of the wells tested were found to have above one part per billion of chromium-6, Grande said. None of the wells tested as high as the 1.79 ppb trace level found in the January study.

Madison Water Utility is currently partnering with Public Health to address any concerns about possible health-related effects.

“I really do not think there is a significant issue based on what the test results were, but the information we have has been provided to Public Health,” Grande said. “We partner with Public Health whenever there is a concern about the safety or health- related effects due to our drinking water.”

Environmental Working Group, the independent organization that originally found the contaminant in drinking water throughout the country, praised Madison for its continued efforts to test the chromium-6 levels despite lack of federal or state requirement.

EWG spokesperson Leeann Brown said the organization was proud of Madison for responding so quickly to the group’s test results and to the EPA’s response to the study.

Brown said collecting data is the most important thing Madison can do right now because without an appropriate data set it would be difficult to figure out where the contaminant was coming from or how to further treat or combat the contaminant.

She said Madison residents should be aware of the issue, and EWG is not expecting to see health concerns arise from this particular contaminant over the course of the next several years, but there is not agreement about what the effects could be in the long term.

“People should still drink the water but should remain proactive in looking at ways to limit the chromium-6 in drinking water,” Brown said.

Studies have found chromium-6 is carcinogenic when inhaled. It is used in the production process for materials such as dyes, stainless steel and leather.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/03/22/madison-finds-widespread-chromium-6-trace-levels-in-drinking-water/feed/0Column: The importance of bio-fuel researchhttp://uwire.com/2011/03/18/column-the-importance-of-bio-fuel-research/
http://uwire.com/2011/03/18/column-the-importance-of-bio-fuel-research/#commentsFri, 18 Mar 2011 18:33:12 +0000editorhttp://uwire.com/?p=23647In this fast moving world of rapid technological advancement, we need to stop for a moment and think about how best to conserve and protect our environment. The threats of global warming, the resulting change in climate patterns and a high consumption rate of our limited natural resources currently loom over us. Proper utilization of the environment’s resources is key to saving our world before environmental degradation reaches an irreversible stage, and with the resources and programs here, N.C. State should begin the process.

Bio-fuels is a subject extensively being researched and optimized, but it is still relatively unheard of. The use of any material of biological origin to generate fuels, including electricity, falls under this title. It would be to our advantage for us at N.C. State to take advantage of the fact that we live in a moderately sized town, with an abundance of accessible materials available to us.

Harnessing energy from these sources would not only be a more economical option, but one with better and safer long-term implications. The initial costs involved in setting up bio-fuel plants and reactors around campus would indeed be substantial, but over time the amount of reduction would compensate for the necessary initial expenses.

The application of microbial fuel cells to generate electricity involves the utilization of microorganisms to convert chemical energy into electricity. With our well-equipped microbiology laboratories and collaborations with Biotechnology and Bio-fuel centers around North Carolina, our University could easily expand upon research of bio-fuels.

The blending of bio-fuels with normal fuel would have the dual benefit of reducing the release of harmful carbon emission into the atmosphere as well as bringing down the spiraling costs of petroleum. A slight compromise with mileage is indeed a small price to pay for the other associated benefits.

Another idea would be to utilize kitchen wastes to generate bio-energy instead of just dumping it. With the number of University Dining outlets scattered around campus, a large amount of needed materials could be collected. Fruitful use of such wastes would help in curbing pollution, thus further helping in sustaining our environment and conserving our rapidly depleting sources of fossil fuels. Yet another way N.C. State may lead the way in this field of research.

Generating electricity and cutting down on power related expenditures is not the only potential application of this technology. By using all that Mother Nature has to offer us to minimize long standing environmental issues, and maximize energy output would be. This model would not only benefit us here at N.C. State, but for all North Carolinians to see and implement. So let us go out there and do our bit to make our world a greener, cleaner, safer and better place to live in.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/03/18/column-the-importance-of-bio-fuel-research/feed/0Editorial: We must take steps to end reliance on oilhttp://uwire.com/2011/03/16/editorial-we-must-take-steps-to-end-reliance-on-oil/
http://uwire.com/2011/03/16/editorial-we-must-take-steps-to-end-reliance-on-oil/#commentsWed, 16 Mar 2011 21:13:43 +0000editorhttp://uwire.com/?p=23623Fuel is a hot commodity and one we Americans often underestimate in our relatively low-cost energy market. Our infrastructure, our politics and our very lifestyle are all designed with the need in mind to allocate energy the most efficiently. Even down to the level of college students, the energy market has countless strings that tie down finances and resources.

We notice this most heavily in the price of gasoline. Often we bemoan the prices of fuel when they rise near the $4 per gallon mark, but we fail to realize that the U.S. actually enjoys relatively cheap fuel prices compared to nations like Great Britain or France who pay more than $7 per gallon.

The U.S. government has been subsidizing oil companies for decades in order to offset the cost of gasoline to consumers. That means almost $40 billion in taxpayer money is paid directly to oil companies for fuel each year.

We are one of the few countries who do this, and it begs the question – what if we allocated that money beyond oil?

A new wave of hybrids and fully electric vehicles has recently become available to consumers, and they seem to be catching on fairly well. But the technology is only a newcomer in an arena of giants.

A bill recently died in Congress that proposed cutting oil subsidies completely. Undoubtedly, doing so would increase the costs of fuel. But what if we took the $40 billion and gave it back to consumers, in the form of credits households could use to purchase an electric vehicle.

House Republicans were responsible for killing the “Ending Big Oil Tax Subsidies” Act, but it almost certainly traces back even farther to energy lobbyists infecting legislation.

How long is it going to take for us to realize we’ve been mucking around in oil long enough? Politicians continue to stall legislation that would release the death grip oil companies have on the energy market. How does that benefit us or count as forward thinking?

We have no excuses for staying grounded in oil like we are. We are a progressive society, and the technology is there.

The answer to stymieing oil subsidies is to cut off demand for oil itself, and that’s where our generation can succeed.

It’s simple. Cutting oil subsidies will cause the price of gasoline to increase toward its natural equilibrium. The high price will necessarily shrink demand for oil and create massive demand for non-oil dependant transportation.

Taking the money from oil subsidies, and giving it to households for electric cars in a cash-for-clunkers-esque manner would give the auto-industry more than enough incentive to innovate away from oil in order to make massive gains off the new clean energy market’s demand.

Rallying around high-speed rail development and promoting infrastructure changes to accommodate more clean energy use are just a couple ways we can move away from this archaic age of oil.

It’s our generation who is ultimately responsible for realizing enough is enough, that the oil fad should have died decades ago. The technology is there, has been there for a long time, and there’s no reason for us to continue driving our parents’ cars.

If we are to call ourselves a progressive generation, we can’t allow oil companies to continue weighing us down.

If we create the demand, the market will follow. Students need to realize they in fact do carry enough influence to change demand, and ultimately, the way we consume energy.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/03/16/editorial-we-must-take-steps-to-end-reliance-on-oil/feed/0Florida research could save South American banana industryhttp://uwire.com/2011/03/14/florida-research-could-save-south-american-banana-industry/
http://uwire.com/2011/03/14/florida-research-could-save-south-american-banana-industry/#commentsMon, 14 Mar 2011 21:39:58 +0000editorhttp://uwire.com/?p=23588The banana plant may be at risk of extinction due to the spread of a disease.

Randy Ploetz, a researcher at UF’s Tropical Research and Education Center in south Florida, has created a six-part plan which he is sharing with the banana industry to prevent the spread of the disease to the Western Hemisphere.

Tropical Race 4, a variant of Panama disease, destroyed entire banana plantations in Southeast Asia in 1990. If the disease spreads to South America, there would be a significant impact on Florida consumers who rely on imports of the fruit because of Florida’s unfavorable environment for growing bananas.

Ploetz said if the disease does spread to South America, the Cavendish banana people know today would become extinct.

“I don’t have a crystal ball, so I don’t know when it’s going to happen,” he said. “But what has happened in the past with diseases like this is they do move.”

Ploetz’s plan lays out strategies on how to keep Tropical Race 4 out of America and what to do in the case of an outbreak. He aims to educate banana producers, researchers and anyone involved with the banana market in the Western Hemisphere.

“My goal is to let people know that this thing is lurking,” he said. “They need to be prepared on how to keep it away and what to do when it comes.”

Ploetz said if the disease spreads to the Western Hemisphere, it will wipe out entire banana plantations in countries such as Ecuador, where bananas are the biggest export.

“This affects virtually anyone who consumes the typical Chiquita banana seen in grocery stores,” he said.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/03/14/florida-research-could-save-south-american-banana-industry/feed/0Petition calls for end to water bottle sales on Michigan’s campushttp://uwire.com/2011/03/09/petition-calls-for-end-to-water-bottle-sales-on-michigans-campus/
http://uwire.com/2011/03/09/petition-calls-for-end-to-water-bottle-sales-on-michigans-campus/#commentsThu, 10 Mar 2011 04:37:57 +0000editorhttp://uwire.com/?p=23562Members of the University community who buy bottled water instead of filling up at a drinking fountain may have been getting disapproving looks from a group of students recently.

Through a new petition, members of the Michigan Student Assembly’s Environmental Issues Commission are urging the University administration to ban the sale of bottled water from all vendors on campus. However, top University administrators, including University President Mary Sue Coleman, have said that such a move would most likely not be executed.

The petition proposes to eliminate bottled water from on-campus stores and vending machines and states that single-use bottled water is expensive, wasteful and harmful to the environment. Instead, the petition’s supporters want the University to install more water-filling stations, like the two that were installed in Mason Hall this year, to encourage the use of reusable water bottles.

Art & Design senior Lauren Sopher was inspired to write the petition by her work on the LSA Water Theme Semester Student Steering Committee. Sopher worked with Maggie Oliver, chair of MSA’s Environmental Issues Commission, to create and promote the online petition through MSA’s UPetition website.

Though the commission held events that raised awareness about bottled water in the past, Oliver said, this term seemed like a good time to launch the campaign because of the LSA Water Theme semester.

“LSA was doing the water-themed semester, so it’s going to be on people’s minds,” Oliver said.

Sopher said buying bottled water just doesn’t make sense.

“The thing with water bottles is water is a resource that should be available to everyone. It shouldn’t be a commodity,” Sopher said.

But, Tom Lauria, vice president of communications of the International Bottled Water Association, said water is a product that “has no special claim to being free.”

“As a commodity, water is in everything. It is ubiquitous,” Lauria said. “It is collected from private property like any other natural resource.”

At a fireside chat with students last month, Coleman said she was impressed with the level of environmental activism on campus, but said it was unlikely the administration would ever implement a ban of plastic water bottles.

“I think a more effective strategy is to convince people not to buy bottled water,” Coleman said, adding that University administrators make an effort to use reusable pitchers and cups instead of bottled water at their meetings.

“I encourage you to let your voices be heard,” Coleman said. “But just from a standpoint of what we can to do as an administration, to say we’re not going to sell things on campus, that’s more difficult for us. But, I certainly think you should advocate for more sustainable practices.”

For individuals who prefer bottled water because of its convenience, Oliver said, this reasoning isn’t worth its costs to the environment.

“I understand it could be frustrating having to take a few extra seconds to grab your water bottle and clean your water bottle,” Oliver said. “It’s hard to change your behavior. But I’m asking you, please make that change, not for me, but for our environment.”

However, Lauria said there is no reason to target bottled water as an environmental threat.

“It’s just easy to get natural spring water or purified water,” Lauria said. “It tastes better. Its mineral content gives it a brighter flavor. It is physically clearer when you put it up against the tap water. And I don’t understand why anyone would be questioning me consuming this, particularly when I have a recycling bin in the kitchen.”

The Environmental Issues Commission has advertised the bottled water petition on campus, in the residence halls, and by e-mailing professors and student groups to raise awareness of the issue.

Even if the commission doesn’t persuade the administration to ban the sale of bottled water on campus, Oliver said the petition will have succeeded in the most important goal in spreading the commission’s message.

“We have nearly 2,000 signatures right now, and that’s 2,000 people who said they are willing to change,” Oliver said. “If this act got people thinking, and got people to use reusable water bottles, and got people more environmentally aware, that’s what EIC is trying to do.”

— Daily News Editor Joseph Lichterman contributed to this report.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/03/09/petition-calls-for-end-to-water-bottle-sales-on-michigans-campus/feed/0Google offers funds to Students for Clean Waterhttp://uwire.com/2011/03/01/google-offers-funds-to-students-for-clean-water/
http://uwire.com/2011/03/01/google-offers-funds-to-students-for-clean-water/#commentsTue, 01 Mar 2011 19:30:21 +0000editorhttp://uwire.com/?p=23412Google is giving a UT student organization an opportunity to raise up to $40,000 toward their cause of providing clean water to schools in developing countries.

The company will donate $1 to Students for Clean Water every time a student uses Hotpot, Google’s new initiative that allows users to rate their favorite local businesses. Hotpot gives personalized results to people based on their tastes and recommendations.

“We thought teaming up with an active, energetic student group in this way would really motivate everyone to get involved in a good cause,” said Vanessa Schneider, the Community Manager for Hotpot.

Students for Clean Water, a student group formed in the fall, works to get clean water to countries who lack safe drinking water by fundraising. They specifically aim to build wells at schools, the organization’s spokesman Chris Nguyen said.

“We really think water is something that can make living so much easier, and students shouldn’t have to worry about water, they should just be learning,” Nguyen said. “If students learn better, then they get better jobs and have a better future.”

The money raised will go to the nonprofit organization charity: water. Nguyen and club president Blake Mankin said they hope this campaign will help spread awareness about the organization and the issue of lack of clean water. Nguyen said although a number of people have attended their meetings, he hopes the drive will increase student participation.

“Almost a billion people in the world lack access to clean water, and a lack of access to clean water kills more people than all forms of violence, including war,” Mankin said. “As an organization, we’re really frustrated about that and we seek to raise money to help developing countries get clean water for the first time.”

Mankin said the organization will most likely reach their $40,000 goal.

“This is really one of the easiest ways you can give money to help with this problem because you don’t even have to open your wallet,” Mankin said.

The campaign started Monday and will end March 10.

“I think that it’s so exciting because it really gives us an awesome platform for raising awareness and money at the same time because of how far reaching the Internet is and how easy it is for us to market this online and to our friends,” Mankin said. “Specifically, we want to show people how easy it is to be involved and how easy it is to be part of the solution.”

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/03/01/google-offers-funds-to-students-for-clean-water/feed/0Green playgrounds spring up around bay areahttp://uwire.com/2011/02/24/green-playgrounds-spring-up-around-bay-area/
http://uwire.com/2011/02/24/green-playgrounds-spring-up-around-bay-area/#commentsThu, 24 Feb 2011 19:34:32 +0000editorhttp://uwire.com/?p=23343While elementary school students usually spend recess in yards with endless asphalt and harsh metal structures, children in any schoolyard designed by Berkeley-based environmental planner Sharon Danks instead play in blooming gardens, shaded ponds and nature trails.

“We’re trying to put the idea of exploration and challenge and wonder back into an environment that they spend all their time in, and that’s the schoolyard,” she said.

Danks and her firm, Bay Tree Design, have been working with Bay Area school districts to create green schoolyards, boasting features like outdoor classroom spaces, greenhouses, edible vegetable gardens and composting bins. These playgrounds, which allow students to understand natural processes in a way that urbanized landscapes prevent, have been gaining popularity across the nation as more organic forms of instruction.

“A green schoolyard … allows the teachers to teach their classes outside, to provide play environment that is richer than the traditional one – that has creative play and active play balanced, and one that reflects local ecology in a number of ways,” she said. “Around here, it usually means having less asphalt.”

For the past several years, Danks has been working on designing green schoolyards in the San Francisco Unified School District – where 15 elementary school yards have been completed and 29 are in the works – as part of the district’s Proposition A bond program, composed of two local school bonds passed in 2003 and 2006 to improve district facilities. A chunk of that money has been designated to making schoolyards more eco-friendly, which is where Danks comes in.

“We aim to serve children and parents and communities of schools in (the district) to help them transform their school yards into more vibrant learning environments, so basically, taking asphalt yards and making them vibrant outdoor classrooms,” said Rachel Pringle, programs manager for the non-profit, San Francisco Green Schoolyard Alliance, that works with the school district.

Much of the district’s plans for making their schoolyards more eco-centric, according to Pringle, came from Danks, who has been pushing for more green space in schools for the past ten years. In 2000, she completed her joint master’s degree in landscape architecture and city planning at UC Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design, and after receiving a Geraldine Knight Scott Travelling Fellowship, she explored innovative schoolyards – the subject of her master’s thesis – around Europe.

She said each region she visited has its own speciality when it comes to schoolyard designs, and California’s is school gardens. But there is more to a green schoolyard than just a garden. Danks also emphasized making schoolyards more comfortable and usable by planting more trees for shade, creating barriers that allow different kinds of activities, growing edible gardens, tailoring playground equipment to different age levels and facilitating outdoor classrooms and art projects.

And with this long list of goals comes a long list of benefits – a more balanced play environment, increased familiarity with ecology, improved teaching quality and a community’s ability to “reclaim its public space” that has been given to a school district.

“What we’re doing is re-empowering the community at the school to be the stewards of their own backyard,” she said.

She also works as a volunteer at Rosa Parks Elementary School in the Berkeley Unified School District, where solar panels teach students about renewable energy and an edible garden familiarizes them with seasonal changes and gardening.

“It makes recess much more interesting for the students, and it encourages a lot of imaginative play with the kids … and it also makes for a beautiful campus,” said Paco Furlan, principal of the school. “Students are able to do hands-on science with our pond and with our garden and also with the living plants that we have around campus.”

In November, Danks published a book showcasing her knowledge about green schoolyards called “Asphalt to Ecosystems,” which also has pictures from many of the 200 schools she has visited in eight countries. After the schoolyards in San Francisco are completed in June, Danks will also host an international conference in the Bay Area for green schoolyard planners to “cross-pollinate,” she said.

“Kids grow up to think about the world in the way they experience it,” she said. “Why should we accept clay and asphalt and boring environments for our kids when we could have something else?”

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/02/24/green-playgrounds-spring-up-around-bay-area/feed/0Toomer’s fallout unites rivalshttp://uwire.com/2011/02/24/toomer%e2%80%99s-fallout-unites-rivals/
http://uwire.com/2011/02/24/toomer%e2%80%99s-fallout-unites-rivals/#commentsThu, 24 Feb 2011 19:16:33 +0000editorhttp://uwire.com/?p=23335One week after word broke that the oaks at Toomer’s Corner had been poisoned, a task force has begun its attempt to rescue the oaks and assess the damage to the surrounding soil.

Gary Keever, professor of horticulture and member of the task force, said he was not optimistic about the chances of a recovery for the trees.

“I’d put it between zero and 15 percent,” he said.

Even so, workers have removed the topsoil surrounding the roots.

Protective tents were placed over the uncovered roots, and more activated charcoal was applied in an attempt to stop further uptake of the deadly herbicide through the tree’s roots.

Keever said the task force was given extra help Sunday from a surprising source when workers from Alabama Plant Services, a Sylacauga-based company, came to Auburn to aid in the project.

“These were Alabama people, and they volunteered their services,” Keever said.

Clad in Crimson Tide T-shirts and using an industrial-strength vacuum, the company workers were able to remove the soil from the roots when the vacuum the University was using failed.

“They’re part of our community and part of our state, and this was something we felt we could do to give back,” said Steve Sherbert, regional manager for the company.

Sherbert said he and his men worked for about 18 hours on the soil.

“These people were truly interested in helping us out,” Keever said. “There’s so much goodwill coming out of this that just amazes me.”

The task force drenched the roots in water to keep them hydrated and new, herbicide-free top soil was packed into the tree beds with more activated carbon early Wednesday morning.

As for the surrounding plant-life, Keever said their initial analysis was showing encouraging signs.

Concentration of the herbicide was not found to be at lethal levels outside of the two large oaks that were poisoned directly.

However, Keever said further testing was needed and some areas did show high levels of the herbicide.

“More than likely this contamination is from people walking in there, and tracking it out,” Keever said.

Meanwhile, a joint initiative was announced by Kurt Sasser, SGA president and a senior in human resource management, and James Fowler, SGA president at the University of Alabama.

The two said sister trees would be planted on Auburn and Alabama’s campus with a plaque below them as a sign of unity between the two schools in light of the poisoning.

“What we need to do needs to be more than a statement,” Sasser said. “It needs to be a public display of mutual respect between the two universities.”

No time line was given for when the trees would be planted.

Sasser said the location of the tree on Auburn’s campus was not yet known, but he would be in consultation with University planners and wanted to get student feedback before a decision was made.

“Students, fans, faculty and staff all stood disheartened, and the actions of a few certainly do not represent our entire fan base and our Alabama family,” Fowler said.

Fowler said he hoped the Toomer’s incident would strengthen the rivalry and partnership between the two schools.

“There is a special bond that exists and that everyone knows about between Auburn and Alabama,” Fowler said. “When Auburn needs us, we’re there and when Alabama needs Auburn, they’re there.”

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/02/24/toomer%e2%80%99s-fallout-unites-rivals/feed/0Reid aims for better education, prostitution ban to aid Nevada’s economyhttp://uwire.com/2011/02/23/reid-aims-for-better-education-prostitution-ban-to-aid-nevadas-economy/
http://uwire.com/2011/02/23/reid-aims-for-better-education-prostitution-ban-to-aid-nevadas-economy/#commentsWed, 23 Feb 2011 19:38:46 +0000editorhttp://uwire.com/?p=23323CARSON CITY — Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nevada, called for education improvements, clean energy development and a prostitution ban as ways to help the state’s economy in his address to the Nevada State Legislature today.

The Assembly and Senate held a joint floor session with a packed gallery at 11 a.m. for Reid’s address. While the room fell silent during Reid’s call to outlaw brothels, his comments for improving education were met with much applause from both parties.

“Our problems weren’t created in a day, and they won’t be solved overnight,” Reid said during his half-hour speech. “We know how to bounce back, though. Our challenge is great, but it isn’t new. Nevada has always been a work in progress.”

Reid defended the stimulus package, stating that it has kept thousands of teachers in the classroom and that Nevada’s most struggling schools will receive grants. He said that Congress is working to reform the No Child Left Behind Act in order to make it work for more of the state’s schools since education cannot be a “one-size fits all approach.”

In response to proposed budget cuts to both K-12 and higher education, Reid said it undermines the most important goal: “Preparing Nevada’s students for the global economy.”

“We have to recognize that our children’s education is not about tenure and teachers unions. It’s not about budgets, or taxes or profits. It’s not about yesterday’s alliances or adversaries,” he said to much applause. “It’s not about us at all. It’s about our children, our students and their future.”

He said although Nevada is low in the ranks in terms of education, the state is at the front of the “clean-energy revolution.”

The state needs to continue welcoming international companies to make Nevada the hub of the renewable energy industry, he said.

“Now is our chance to turn that energy into jobs,” Reid said.

Reid said part of attracting more business to the state means abolishing prostitution. He targeted Storey County, where one of the biggest businesses is legal prostitution, saying that he’s talked with families and business owners who don’t want their homes to be surrounded by the sex industry.

“Let’s have an adult conversation about an adult subject,” Reid said as the owner of the Bunny Ranch and sex workers listened from the gallery. “Nevada needs to be known as the first place for innovation and investment — not as the last place where prostitution is still legal. When the nation thinks about Nevada, it should think about the world’s newest ideas and newest careers, not about its oldest profession.”

After his speech, Reid further explained that he thinks the abolishment should be a county option.

“We need new businesses to come to Nevada, people who are going to bring jobs here.”

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/02/23/reid-aims-for-better-education-prostitution-ban-to-aid-nevadas-economy/feed/0Column: Go organic, invest in your healthhttp://uwire.com/2011/02/22/column-go-organic-invest-in-your-health/
http://uwire.com/2011/02/22/column-go-organic-invest-in-your-health/#commentsTue, 22 Feb 2011 07:23:37 +0000editorhttp://uwire.com/?p=23292Feeling sluggish lately? Are you tired, unmotivated, crabby or perhaps short-tempered? While, admittedly, some (OK, probably most) of those feelings may stem from 12 hours of homework, classes and work you do every day, there is a good chance that what you’re eating may contribute as well.

As college students, we understandably go for the foods that are the easiest on our wallets, which usually means processed, conventional foods.

Most fruits and vegetables that show up at your local grocery store have been grown under the protection of chemical cocktails, which guard crops from insects and diseases and also help the grower produce higher yields. In the same fashion, much of the meat we eat comes from animals fed with hay or grains containing the same chemicals. These animals are also commonly injected with hormones or vaccines. Those chemicals are, in turn, passed on to us as consumers.

Now, I understand that there are benefits of producing chemically altered food. In a world where population is booming and we are facing global food shortages, it may not be possible to feed entire populations with organic food.

However, our bodies were not made to process many of the chemicals that show up in conventionally produced foods.

Studies have linked these chemicals to diseases such as obesity and cancer. They also contribute to behavioral problems in children, sleep loss and a decline in overall well-being.

Organically grown produce is typically better for both the body and mind.

In a 10-year study conducted by the University of California-Davis, researchers found that organically grown tomatoes produced large amounts of the antioxidants quercetin and kaempferol, which are good for your health and help prevent heart disease. The quantities of antioxidants in organic tomatoes were more than 95 percent higher than in those grown conventionally.

Ever had raw, organic milk? Squeam all you want, but milk from grass-fed, organic cows is not only delicious: It has more antioxidants, omega-3 fatty acids and vitamins than nonorganic milk.

Additionally, going organic is a great choice if you are trying to be environmentally friendly. If a farmer isn’t using chemicals and pesticides on the crop, they can’t get into the soil, water or air.

As far as I’m concerned, the best part about going organic is that the food actually tastes better. Try it for yourself. Get to your local co-op and buy some USDA-certified organic bananas: You will be able to tell the difference, I give you my word.

The biggest issue for college students trying to go organic is cost.

Since famers simply cannot produce as large of a yield of organic foods as they would conventional, prices are higher.

And, on a college budget, it is nearly impossible to eat only organic foods.

However, college is a good time to start thinking about infusing organic food into your diet and perhaps making the full switch later on in life.

I’ll admit it: The apples and oranges in my fridge now are conventionally grown. However, the bananas are not. While it is expensive, students may find comfort in the fact that they are essentially making an investment in their health for the long run when they eat organic food.

Even if the idea of raw milk makes you nauseous, or the thought of paying twice as much for a pound of grass-fed beef hurts your bottom line, the idea of flooding your body with chemicals and pesticides can’t be much better. Start small — try a few different things. And trust me, you can’t go wrong with the bananas.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/02/22/column-go-organic-invest-in-your-health/feed/0Column: Oil companies must be responsible for their actionshttp://uwire.com/2011/02/21/column-oil-companies-must-be-responsible-for-their-actions/
http://uwire.com/2011/02/21/column-oil-companies-must-be-responsible-for-their-actions/#commentsMon, 21 Feb 2011 19:54:49 +0000editorhttp://uwire.com/?p=23290The National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill recommended this month that Congress raise the current $75 million liability cap for oil companies, but did not offer a specific proposal or dollar amount.

The liability cap limits the amount oil companies are legally obligated to pay those who file claims against them after environmental disasters. Once the cost exceeds the cap, taxpayer dollars fund the recovery.

A bill that aimed to remove the $75 million cap passed in the House of Representatives last summer, but negotiations regarding a new cap killed the bill in the Senate. Industry allies have argued that removing the cap would make it impossible for smaller companies to afford the insurance required to drill offshore.

But if a company can’t afford to clean up its own potential mess, it shouldn’t be encouraged to make one in the first place. Any liability cap, no matter how high, is an insult to the people who feel the harshest effects of an oil spill.

According to MSNBC, estimates of the total cost for cleanup and claims in last year’s Deepwater Horizon disaster reached $70 billion. Frank Glaviano, former vice president of Shell Exploration and Production, said to MSNBC that no amount of money will be able to repair the damage that was done by the spill.

According to restorethegulf.gov, the Deepwater Horizon well gushed an estimated 62,000 barrels of oil per day into the Gulf of Mexico at the height of the spill, leaking approximately 4.9 million barrels overall. President Barack Obama described the disaster as the worst the country has faced.

BP set up a $20 billion claims escrow fund. However, the national commission released a report this month saying that many claimants are dissatisfied with the amounts of their payments. Others received no payments at all after dealing with the messy claims process.

Fishing and tourism bring more than $120 billion to the area surrounding the Gulf each year, according to MSNBC, and fishing operations were shut down for months during and after the spill. Oil touched 650 miles of coastal land, according to the National Resources Defense Council. The environmental and economic damage is still being tallied.

Additionally, marine toxicologist Riki Ott estimated that 4 to 5 million residents had been exposed to dangerous amounts of oil, according to Bridge the Gulf, a group supporting environmental justice in the Gulf.

When a spill halts business, transforms industries, impacts the environment and alters human health, the oil company at fault should pay every legitimate claim, even if it goes belly up.

The cap discourages companies from investing in safety innovations, which might cost more than the cap itself.

Sure, if the cap were removed, smaller companies may be discouraged. Higher insurance costs might eventually drive up the price of gas or force companies to move out of the Gulf completely for fear of drilling in risky areas.

The scary part is that 27,000 wells are currently abandoned and unchecked in the Gulf of Mexico, according to the Associated Press. Many have been abandoned since the ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s.

BP alone has abandoned 600 wells.

According to the AP, tens of thousands may be badly sealed, because they were drilled before strict regulations or the operating companies violated rules.

After wells are abandoned, no one checks for leaks. Environmental Protection Agency data shows that 17 percent of wells on land had been improperly plugged. If that percentage is synonymous offshore, 4,600 wells in the Gulf could be defectively plugged.

Shoddy plugs, age, corrosion and natural changes below the sea level can cause a well to fail. Petroleum engineer John Getty said to the AP that abandoned wells may eventually leak after decades of aging.

Since 1978, poor cement jobs have been cited 34 times in accident and incident reports on offshore wells, according to an AP review.

Oil companies are taking risks to make enormous profit. They should be held limitlessly accountable for mistakes that could harm an entire region for generations. Those who can’t afford the responsibility that comes with putting an entire ecosystem in harm’s way should not consider going into such a dangerous business.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/02/21/column-oil-companies-must-be-responsible-for-their-actions/feed/0Toomer’s Oaks Poisonedhttp://uwire.com/2011/02/17/toomer%e2%80%99s-oaks-poisoned/
http://uwire.com/2011/02/17/toomer%e2%80%99s-oaks-poisoned/#commentsThu, 17 Feb 2011 18:47:09 +0000editorhttp://uwire.com/?p=23232Officials from the Alabama State Pesticide Residue Laboratory have confirmed the live oaks at Toomer’s Corner, landmark icons of the city and the University, have been poisoned and are unlikely to survive.

“It was malicious,” said Gary Keever, professor of horticulture. “There’s no other way to look at it.”

Keever said the trees were poisoned with tebuthiuron, commonly known as Spike 80DF. Horticulture experts reported the lowest amount detected was 0.78 parts per million. Keever said a typical measurement of the substance is taken in parts per billion.

“That gives you some idea of how concentrated it is around Toomer’s Oaks,” Keever said.

The trees, estimated to be more than 130 years old, are not expected to survive such a concentrated dose of the poison.

Soil samples were sent to the lab the day after a caller claimed Jan. 27 on air to have poisoned the trees on the Paul Finebaum radio show out of Birmingham.

“I poisoned the two Toomer’s trees,” said an audibly outraged caller who identified himself only as Al from Dadeville. “I put spike 80DF in them. They’re not dead yet, but they definitely will die. Roll Damn Tide.”

The caller said he poisoned the trees following the Iron Bowl in reaction to Auburn fans allegedly rolling the Toomer’s trees after the death of Alabama coach Paul “Bear” Bryant in 1983 and, more recently, taping the No. 2 Cam Newton jersey to the Bryant statue in Tuscaloosa before the 2010 Iron Bowl.

“That puts it at three months ago,” said Scott McElroy, associate professor of weed science in the College of Agriculture.

McElroy said the effects of the poison will be visible at “greening,” when the tree grows its first leaves of spring.

“We should start seeing them over the next few weeks,” McElroy said. “The trees will drop all of their leaves.”

After several cycles of leaf-shedding, McElroy said the trees will begin to die, but the process could take several years. He did not rule out the possibility of the trees recovering.

“They’re very stressed trees anyway,” McElroy said. “No one really knows how much was taken up by the soil. If they survive, they’re not going to look good.”

Keever said activated charcoal was placed on the trees Wednesday morning and an active transpirent, which will stop the tree from losing water, will be laid down Thursday morning in an attempt to stop the spread of poison.

However, if the trees were indeed poisoned three months ago, Keever said the poison could have spread through the soil to surrounding trees. Keever said samples had been taken at 10-foot increments in a 65-foot radius around the trees.

McElroy said the poison is not harmful to humans in small amounts and said he was not concerned about human harm.

“You would have to eat a pound of stuff for it to kill you and several grams for it to make you sick,” McElroy said.

Keever said the poison was also not harmful to wildlife who nest in the trees.

While the investigation is ongoing, McElroy said he hopes it will not be difficult to determine who purchased the poison.

“This is not something everybody goes out and buys,” McElroy said. “There’s only a small amount of people in the state of Alabama who buy this every year.”

McElroy compared the poisoning of the Oaks to the Treaty Oak in Austin, Texas, which was poisoned by a similar substance in 1989, sparking local outrage. The person responsible was apprehended and sentenced to nine years in prison.

President Jay Gogue urged the Auburn family to use caution before rushing to judgement.

“It is understandable to feel outrage in reaction to a malicious act of vandalism,” Gogue said. “However, we should live up to the example we set in becoming national champions and the beliefs expressed in our Auburn Creed.”

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/02/17/toomer%e2%80%99s-oaks-poisoned/feed/0Editorial: We demand fresh foodshttp://uwire.com/2011/02/11/editorial-we-demand-fresh-foods/
http://uwire.com/2011/02/11/editorial-we-demand-fresh-foods/#commentsFri, 11 Feb 2011 20:05:21 +0000editorhttp://uwire.com/?p=23134The Facts: Kathleen Merrigan, the USDA deputy secretary, spoke at the University about her initiative “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food” and congratulated the Center for Environmental Farming Systems for their 10% campaign. The University has agreed to devote 10 percent of its food budget to buying local food.

Our Opinion: Students should demand that University Dining and U.S. Food Service provides local food in the dining halls. Although the increased price for a meal plan is not desirable, the trade offs would be providing more support for the state’s agriculture industry and improve the healthiness of food on campus.

~

Needing food is one thing every human being has in common. We must all eat in some way to survive. To be healthy, we cannot eat just anything, but we must select foods that provide the right balance of nutrients. Many students rely on meal plans, provided by University Dining for their food needs. U.S. Food Service purveys goods to University Dining, meaning ingredients for our food actually comes from a national distributor, unless otherwise noted. Students should demand, however, that the U.S. Food Service fill N.C. State’s orders with almost exclusively with North Carolina products.

Food has to travel between 1,500 and 2,500 miles to get to our dining hall, but it doesn’t have to. U.S. Food Service is there to help University Dining find what it needs from across the state. At certain points during the year, there is a possibility to pool produce from across N.C. to provide fresh, in-state produce. Traveling 300 miles is certainly better than 2,500.

As a land grant university, it is our mission to serve the state of North Carolina. Food purchasing, while not visible to most students, is a major factor in our state’s economy and the livelihood of our in-state farmers, many of which came to study here and now have their children studying here.

Total cash receipts for farms in N.C. in 2010 was $9.7 billion and North Carolinians sped $35 billion on food. By buying from farmers around the state, U.S. Food Service’s, and in essence our, dollar goes back to our local economy. This can help our state’s budget, which will in turn help the University’s budget.

North Carolina’s 10% campaign has already added another $1 million in pledges to the North Carolina economy since November and provides services to connect businesses to N.C. farmers. University Dining prepares 30,000 meals every day during the spring and fall semesters and serves almost year round. Taking 10 percent of those meals and averaging the ingredients across an entire year make the possibility to get the needed produce realizable, if the U.S. Food Service would take advantage of the N.C. market and organize its produce by originating.

There is one problem with using more local, fresh foods: the price of a meal plan will increase. However, UNC-Chapel Hill’s residential 8-meal week plan costs $1,050 a semester. The cheapest plan Duke University provides to first year students locks them into 12 meals a week with $320 in Duke’s equivalent of Board Bucks for $2,505. Compared to them, N.C. State students pay $180 and $1,095 less respectively. With this in mind, there is plenty of financial room to negotiate for more fresh food and still be more affordable than our rivals.

By demanding U.S. Food Service buy N.C. products we get to eat healthier, we know our food is from close by and we can sleep soundly knowing our University and our meal plans support the state economy. Basic economics will tell you consumer choice drives demand, therefore by choosing to buy a meal plan and eat on campus, we should be the ones who say where our food comes from.

These big corporations were the main topic of Wednesday night’s discussion between best-selling authors Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan, held at Bovard Auditorium moderated by KCRW’s Good Food radio host Evan Kleiman.

“The power of big corporations like ConAgra, Monsanto and Walmart is incredible,” Schlosser said. “They are the ones pulling all the strings behind the government and the food we eat.”

Both Schlosser and Pollan are active figures in issues pertaining to food sustainability and industries. They did years of investigative work on food politics and production, exposing the government’s role in unsanitary and discriminatory farm practices through detailed, no-holds-barred books that shocked the country.

Meanwhile, Kleiman is founder of the Slow Food Chapter in Los Angeles and also serves in the Stewardship Council of Roots of Change, both which are organizations promoting a sustainable food system.

Debating Walmart’s recent five-year plan to repackage its food to include lower amounts of unhealthy salts, fats and sugars, both Schlosser and Pollan were hopeful, but critical.

“Walmart is the biggest grocery store that feeds 40 percent of America,” Pollan said. “I think if they figure out how to [offer healthier products] profitably, there can be significant changes.”

Scholosser offered a more cynical view.

“The real problem, however, is still that there shouldn’t be any companies that powerful,” Schlosser said. “Ultimately it’s about unchecked power, and how corruptive it is.”

According to Pollan and Schlosser, the idyllic days of local farmers and happy cow pastures are over. The food industry has changed drastically. Farms are getting bigger and producing more, but according to Schlosser and Pollan, these “specialty crops” subsidized by the government never actually enter the consumer’s mouth.

Because of America’s deeply complicated food politics, Pollan and Schlosser said the public is often misinformed about what they eat.

Pollan’s deceivingly simple food motto, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants,” trails into more intense debates from the inaccessibility of expensive organic and health products for the vast majority of America to the obscure yet prominent lobbying and power food farming corporations have over politics.

Parisa Rezvani, a graduate student studying visual anthropology, said she found the discussion to be interesting.

“I hope this talk can accurately inform students because food politics is often confusing and there’s a lot of misinformation,” Rezvani said.

Meanwhile, Michael Zarky, 64, who has been vegetarian for 44 years, said he thinks people need to be more wise with their spending.

“The food movement is mostly for the upper-middle class only,” Zarky said. “People need to stop spending money on stupid things and support local farmers.”

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/02/10/food-inc-challenged-student-food-beliefs/feed/0Obama plans new energy efficiency initiativehttp://uwire.com/2011/02/04/obama-plans-new-energy-efficiency-initiative/
http://uwire.com/2011/02/04/obama-plans-new-energy-efficiency-initiative/#commentsFri, 04 Feb 2011 19:05:22 +0000editorhttp://uwire.com/?p=23003For President Barack Obama, a researcher in an on-campus lab is just as important as the starting quarterback in Beaver Stadium.

“Penn State is a place that knows a little bit about playing to win. Last I counted, Coach Paterno has got more than 400 wins under his belt,” he told a Rec Hall crowd of about 3,000 on Thursday afternoon. “But your nation needs to win, too. We need you to be as proud of what you do in the lab as you are of what your football team does on the field.”

In his first visit to Penn State since a campaign stop in 2008, Obama spoke about new clean energy innovations to students, faculty and community members.

Before speaking at Rec Hall, Obama toured engineering buildings on campus to see different research projects related to energy-efficient innovation, according to a White House press report.

Donning a pair of safety goggles, the president looked at research projects such as sustainable wall systems, solar panels and green roof systems. He said sustainable technologies must be integrated with sound business models to ensure maximum efficiency.

“That creates a sum that’s greater than the whole of its parts,” Obama said.

“That means that they are helping to possibly design buildings that by huge measures are much more efficient than the ones that already exist.”

Across campus at Rec Hall, students began to file in at 9 a.m., waiting for the president to arrive, as lines wound halfway down Burrowes Road.

Before the president took the stage, the arrival of coach Joe Paterno was greeted with cheers from the students.

After a prayer, the pledge of allegiance and the national anthem, students waited another 45 minutes for Obama to arrive.

Then they were asked to silence their cell phones, and for the first time all morning, the crowd fell silent.

A few moments later, the president walked into Rec Hall to cheering supporters.

Obama opened his speech by acknowledging State College Mayor Elizabeth Goreham and Rep. Glenn Thompson, R-Pa, Penn State President Graham Spanier and Paterno.

And after a few jokes about this Sunday’s Super Bowl, he was all business.

Obama said every young person feels the pressures of the future and making serious decisions about their long-term economic value.

“You understand that it isn’t going to be a cake walk, this competition for the future,” he said. “All of us are going to have to up our game.”

He said America has to out-innovate, out-educate and out-build the rest of the world by investing in cutting-edge research and innovations.

Obama spoke about innovations in energy-efficient building projects, like the one Penn State is working on at the Greater Philadelphia Innovation Cluster for Energy-Efficient Building in the Navy Yards in Philadelphia.

“Today, you’re preparing to lead the way on a hub that will be home to the most energy-efficient buildings in the world,” he said.

The Better Buildings Initiative — a new project Obama announced during his speech — will help produce energy-efficient building materials that future businesses and homes will be made out of. The initiative will offer tax incentives for cities and companies, as well as state and local governments, that adopt energy-saving policies.

Spanier attended the speech, along with David Wilson, the president of Morgan State University, one of 10 other universities working with Penn State on the hub project. Spanier said he was pleased with Obama’s dedication to the research going on at Penn State.

“He has a very clear commitment to endorse clean energy,” Spanier said.

College Democrats President Rob Ghormoz (senior-political science) said Obama was right to focus his speech heavily on Penn State.

“He put a lot of focus on Penn State,” he said. “It’s great how he focused on the work that is being done.”

Across campus, students who didn’t receive tickets to the event watched Obama’s speech from viewing areas like the Paul Robeson Cultural Center’s Heritage Hall, where a crowd of about 70 people watched in silence.

Tristan Plunkett (freshman-broadcast journalism) said Obama drew applause and laughter from the crowd toward the beginning of his speech when he spoke about Paterno and Nittany Lions.

But mostly, students just paid attention, Plunkett said.

“There was a lot of chatter beforehand, but once he came on, people started clapping,” Plunkett said. “Then people quieted down and everyone was pretty attentive.”

Spainer said it was a pleasure to host the president for part of the day.

“We had the chance to talk privately, and he seemed very pleased to be here,” he said.

Goreham, who greeted Obama at the airport, said she was impressed with the president’s speech and was thrilled with his visit to Happy Valley, though they didn’t have much time to talk.

“We all went away feeling that we’d been touched personally,” Goreham said. “It was as if the aspirations we all have for our university and our town were touched by the president and we all came together in Rec Hall for a mental group hug.”

Americans may be one step closer to driving zero-emission cars, as a new Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory report published this month sheds light on new methods for harnessing solar energy.

Lab scientists have discovered a low-cost, zero-emission method of effectively utilizing the sun’s energy to extract hydrogen from water, according to a paper published Jan. 20 in Science Magazine’s website. This hydrogen could then be used for fuel cells.

“The idea is using the sun and water (for) generating hydrogen,” said Samuel Mao, career staff scientist at the lab and corresponding author of the paper. “Hydrogen would be used to fuel fuel cells, (and) fuel cells would be used to power cars.”

Mao’s report explains his work in using solar energy and the photocatalyst, titanium dioxide, to extract hydrogen from water. Lab scientists Xiaobo Chen, Lei Liu and Peter Yu co-authored the report with Mao.

Because solar energy alone is not enough to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, photocatalysts “do the work,” said Jin Zhang, a professor in the department of chemistry and biochemistry at UC Santa Cruz.

According to Mao, prior research has focused on adding materials to titanium dioxide to increase its solar absorption. Mao’s first proposal for solar hydrogen production was in 2004.

In his research, Mao applied high pressure and temperature to titanium dioxide, a common substance in white wall paint and sunscreen, to manipulate its atomic structure.

His recent report is the first to introduce the concept of atomic restructuring to aid in generating hydrogen, rather than simply adding materials to the photocatalyst.

Mao calls this atomic restructuring “disorder engineering,” which causes the white substance to change to black and enables it to absorb ultraviolet as well as visible and infrared light.

The more light it absorbs, the more hydrogen can be produced.

Mao said white titanium dioxide is not a very effective photocatalyst because it only absorbs ultraviolet light, which “accounts for less than 10 percent of the world’s solar energy.”

Zhang, who works on similar research on extracting hydrogen from water, described Mao’s research as “novel and significant” in an e-mail.

“This approach can (have) broad impact to … solar energy conversion,” he said in the e-mail.

This method of extracting hydrogen produces no greenhouse gas emissions or byproducts other than water, and then can be used for hydrogen fuel cells in vehicles and buildings.

The Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Energy Association is an advocacy organization for commercializing fuel cells and hydrogen energy.

Pete Barkey, the communications director for the association, said the research on hydrogen energy is “really encouraging” and fuel cells are “integral to the clean energy portfolio.”

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/02/01/scientists-find-new-way-to-utilize-solar-energy/feed/0Color offers insight into coral reef depletion, researchers showhttp://uwire.com/2011/01/28/color-offers-insight-into-coral-reef-depletion-researchers-show/
http://uwire.com/2011/01/28/color-offers-insight-into-coral-reef-depletion-researchers-show/#commentsFri, 28 Jan 2011 18:46:48 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=22813While most scientists agree that coral reefs are in danger of dying, they point their fingers at causes that range from global warming to water pollution. New research from U. Texas researchers suggest there could be a way to slow down the process.

UT scientists published a study Wednesday in leading biological research journal “Proceedings B” that shows a possible link between the color of coral larvae and their propensity either to settle and develop within their original reef or to disperse and spawn in a more remote area of the ocean. Such an ability could allow corals to travel to cooler climates if necessary — a handy trick considering the narrow range of the marine organism’s temperature tolerance.

As of yet, the implications of such an ability are too uncertain to draw definite conclusions about the potential uses of this information. However, researchers hope the finding will improve tactics for determining the health of a coral reef.

“We’re still not quite sure what it means yet,” said Carly Kenkel, an ecology, evolution and behavior graduate student who co-authored the paper. “It would be cool if the color could [tell us something about the coral] instead of having to apply complex biological techniques.”

From there, decisions of where to direct resources and which reefs to try to save can be more efficiently made, said Mikhail Matz, an integrative biology assistant professor.

“You could make better decisions in reef management,” Matz said.

It would be possible to invest in the reefs that are more resistant to destruction or more able to “bounce back” once devastated, he said.

“Coral reefs have been in decline for the last 25 years, so any tools we can come up with to better help coral reefs are fantastic,” Gregor Hodgson, the executive director of the nonprofit reef preservation organization Reef Check. “Whether or not this is actually practical remains to be seen, but so far the study itself is fascinating.”

Matz has led the study since 2006. The National Science Foundation recently awarded him a grant to continue his coral research. Matz said he hopes to complete the research by the end of the year.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/01/28/color-offers-insight-into-coral-reef-depletion-researchers-show/feed/0Former Florida Gov. Bob Graham discusses BP spill research and cleanuphttp://uwire.com/2011/01/28/former-florida-gov-bob-graham-discusses-bp-spill-research-and-cleanup/
http://uwire.com/2011/01/28/former-florida-gov-bob-graham-discusses-bp-spill-research-and-cleanup/#commentsFri, 28 Jan 2011 15:21:59 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=22780The BP oil spill leak may have been capped, but the fight to reclaim the waters of the Gulf of Mexico is far from over.

Former U.S. Senator and Florida Gov. Bob Graham spoke to a crowd of more than 170 people at U. Florida on Thursday evening about his research on the largest oil spill in U.S. history and measures that could prevent a future disaster.

As co-chairman of the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, Graham worked on a 380-page report that delved into the causes of the spill, its effects and potential solutions. Many members of Congress oppose measures that would involve the federal government in corporate oil interests, but Graham doesn’t see this as a purely private-industry issue.

The Gulf of Mexico belongs to all U.S. citizens, Graham said. Citizens are the landlords of those waters, and companies like BP are the tenants.

“You don’t want your tenant to be trashing your property,” he said.

UF sophomore Julia Slayden, an environmental engineering major, was surprised when Graham discussed how offshore oil drilling is still considered by many to be a viable option.

“We really need to focus on stopping the resurgence of interest in offshore drilling,” she said. “You would think [that would have ended] after the oil spill in April.”

The BP spill commission will complete its work in mid-March, but members may create a nonprofit organization to support further research and advocacy on the issue, Graham said in a later interview.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/01/28/former-florida-gov-bob-graham-discusses-bp-spill-research-and-cleanup/feed/0Obama echoes sentiments of State of the Unionhttp://uwire.com/2011/01/27/obama-echoes-sentiments-of-state-of-the-union/
http://uwire.com/2011/01/27/obama-echoes-sentiments-of-state-of-the-union/#commentsThu, 27 Jan 2011 20:02:25 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=22746MANITOWOC, Wis. — After a November election which focused largely on job creation, President Barack Obama changed gears, mentioning the future, the 21st century and innovation a total of 19 times in his first major address following Tuesday’s State of the Union.

While Obama discussed the creation of jobs and the economy — with the word “jobs” used nine times — he echoed a sentiment already covered in Tuesday’s State of the Union address: the United States must become the world champion in innovation to lead the global economy in the 21st century.

At green technology manufacturer Orion Energy Systems in Manitowoc, a city just south of Green Bay, he told the audience of more than 250 employees the kind of work they do there will be central to the country’s goals.

“I came here to Manitowoc to glimpse [the] future,” Obama said. “We’ve got to lead the world in innovation… that’s how we’ll create the jobs of the future.”

Obama recalled how more than 50 years ago a chunk of the satellite Sputnik fell in Manitowoc, after which the U.S. pooled their energy to beat other countries of the world to the moon. The current global race, he said, will be won by the country who leads the world in innovation — particularly with green products.

“It is here, more than 50 years later, that the race for the 21st century will be won,” said Obama, who referenced economic competition with South Korea and China in his speech Tuesday..

Clean energy, he said, must be vital to America’s goals for the future. In the State of the Union address, Obama challenged the U.S. to see that 80 percent of electricity comes from clean sources by 2035. On Wednesday, he reiterated another goal: to become the first nation to have one million electric cars on the roads within five years.

While Obama said green jobs are currently abound in countries like China, the U.S. has not been moving fast enough to create these opportunities.

“Those are jobs that could be created right here that are getting shipped overseas,” Obama said.

Companies like Orion, Obama said, are the exception to this statement. National investment in small, clean energy companies like this will be the key to a successful American economy.

Republican Gov. Scott Walker, who attended Obama’s speech, said he and the president had a healthy conversation when Walker was first elected governor, and although they may root for opposing sides, he hoped they could work together with congress to revive the American economy.

“I don’t care about parties as long as people are working in the right direction when it comes to jobs,” Walker said. “I think in the end for either of us [Wisconsin voters are] going to judge us on job performance, and that’s something I’m looking forward to.”

Walker also mentioned a Green Bay Packers jersey he had given to the president, an avid Chicago Bears fan, with the name ‘Obama’ and the number one. The rivalry was joked about throughout the event, but Obama connected the Packers’ upcoming Super Bowl appearance with his goals of innovation, reminding the audience of famous words from legendary Coach Vince Lombardi.

“‘There is no room for second place. There is only one place in my game, and that’s first place.’ That’s the kind of determination to win that America needs to show right now,” Obama said. “We need to win the future.”

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/01/27/obama-echoes-sentiments-of-state-of-the-union/feed/0The true meaning behind foods labeled organichttp://uwire.com/2011/01/26/the-true-meaning-behind-foods-labeled-organic/
http://uwire.com/2011/01/26/the-true-meaning-behind-foods-labeled-organic/#commentsWed, 26 Jan 2011 15:55:12 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=22641Organic is the emerging buzzword of the decade. Encompassing food, clothes and products used on a day-to-day basis, a new economy has emerged under the organic name. According to an article by Leslie Shallcross of the Anchorage Cooperative Extension office, sales of organic food increased 80% between 1997 and 2006.

In its ever-expanding popularity, the organic foods market has taken America by storm. Chain grocery stores specializing in the sale of organic and natural options have opened in neighborhoods across the nation.

However, comparing the definitions of organic and natural may leave some consumers baffled. Kendra Sticka, a registered dietician, said organic is defined by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) while natural does not have a standard definition.

That means the natural label does not necessarily mean an item is healthy or safe.

“There are many food components or contaminants that are natural in our environment, but it does not make them safe,” Sticka said.

Consider E. coli bacteria. While it is a natural organism, it can wreak havoc over a digestive system.

On the other hand, foods labeled organic must consist of at least 95% organically produced ingredients (excluding water and salt), according to the USDA. Other non-organic ingredients must be approved by the USDA.

While organic foods have gained a reputation for being optimally healthy, that reputation may not be deserved.

“The research does not show that there are significant nutritional differences between organic and non-organic foods,” Sticka said.

One difference should be less pesticide residue on foods labeled organic. According to Shallcross’ article, organic foods can only have up to five percent pesticide residue while the USDA sets limits for non-organic food imports on a per-crop basis.

Those limits can be found in the Maximum Residue Limit Database (MRLD) on the USDA’s website. The MRLD is a massive search engine containing the connections between pesticide residue allowances in non-organic foods and crops imported for sale to the American people.

Shallcross also reported that the USDA, in conjunction with the Environmental Working Group, compiled a list of foods least likely to be contaminated with pesticide residues. The top 10 on the list included avocado, pineapple, frozen sweet corn and even kiwi.

Buying Alaskan foods gives the consumer a pretty good chance at avoiding pesticides because Alaska doesn’t have infestations of herbivores, according to Sticka.

Buying organic could also have an unintended influence on the environment.

“The transportation of the food has impact on the environment as well in terms of fuel usage, etc.,” Sticka said.

Importing organic foods may not only have an impact on one’s carbon footprint, but also their wallet. For those on a tight budget, the best option is to buy local. Products with the organic label carry a flashy price tag, not typically within a college student’s budget. Alaskan options allow students to shop cheap while making healthy choices.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/01/26/the-true-meaning-behind-foods-labeled-organic/feed/0Column: China outpaces U.S. in green technologies, invests for long termhttp://uwire.com/2011/01/25/column-china-outpaces-u-s-in-green-technologies-invests-for-long-term/
http://uwire.com/2011/01/25/column-china-outpaces-u-s-in-green-technologies-invests-for-long-term/#commentsTue, 25 Jan 2011 19:36:00 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=22618Jobs, jobs, jobs. All the politicians talk about jobs and how they are pushing to create them. Their problem, though, is that they only talk about a few jobs here and a few more there. But why waste our efforts trying to save nickels and dimes when we could create an entirely new sector in the economy by investing in green technologies?

Green jobs are by no means the final solution to our economic woes, but they would be a good start. However, to get these green jobs started, the industry is going to need a big injection of investments, and that’s not likely to happen while investors are as nervous as they are.

To overcome shaky investor confidence, the federal government should increase and make permanent subsidies and tax incentives for green companies here in the United States.

Promoting job growth through green technologies will require an increase in subsidies because of the capital-intensive nature of the industry. Buying and making the equipment and facilities for these businesses won’t be cheap. Furthermore, the green sector has a distinct disadvantage in relation to traditional and established sources of energy, such as coal and gas, because it is relatively new, thus requiring more subsidies.

Equally important to increasing subsidies will be making them permanent. Right now, the government has limited resources available for companies investing in solar and wind energies. Those subsidies are helpful, but they will soon expire unless Congress decides to continue them for another short period of one or two years, as they have done in the past. Not knowing whether Congress will allow those subsidies to expire makes investing in the green industry that much more risky. Making those subsidies permanent would show investors that the government is in this for the long haul, and that investments will eventually pay off.

To be sure, investment in the green industry won’t give us new jobs tomorrow. These companies will take a few years to really get going, but it’s one of the few sectors in the economy that shows much potential for growth.

For evidence of this potential, we need to look no further than our biggest competitor, China. According to blogger Andrew Winston of the Harvard Business Review on Sept. 23, 2010, China plans to invest between “$75 to $100 billion per year for 10 years running,” making American investments look paltry in comparison. While we suffered through this recent recession, China took the initiative and invested in the same green technologies we could have been developing. As we bailed out banks and propped up old industries, China provided much-needed subsidies for solar and wind projects. They must be laughing at us as we continue to seek jobs when the answer is right in front of us.

China realized, as we should have, that these subsidies are not a short term spur for job creation but a long term investment. Eventually, once the industry establishes itself and private investors see the risk of providing capital decline, the high subsidies will no longer be needed.

Creating such a green industry will certainly decrease the amount of pollutants in the air as well as the CO2 that causes global warming and climate change. It will also provide us with renewable energy, something we’ll need once our supplies of coal and gas run out.

But even if you enjoy breathing toxins, or you don’t believe in global warming, or you think coal will last us well into the future, creating a green industry is still better than doing nothing. The longer we wait, the more China establishes itself as the leader in this new industry. Even if we don’t demand these technologies, the rest of the world does, providing a huge market for our services.

If “jobs” are the bottom line, then using subsidies to invest in solar, wind and other green technologies is clearly one of our best options.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/01/25/column-china-outpaces-u-s-in-green-technologies-invests-for-long-term/feed/0Column: Global warming should focus on methane, not CO2http://uwire.com/2011/01/25/column-global-warming-should-focus-on-methane-not-co2/
http://uwire.com/2011/01/25/column-global-warming-should-focus-on-methane-not-co2/#commentsTue, 25 Jan 2011 19:33:12 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=22615In an age of environmental paranoia with a dedication to being partly hipster-cool and partly socially-concerned with a green energy movement, it is only natural for America to jump on the global warming bandwagon and start taking the necessary measures to free our atmosphere of the terrible toxins we omit.

Of course, it also doesn’t help that celebrities such as Al Gore jumpstarted the panic with the 2006 documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” a delightful example of a political publicity stunt cloaked in weak factual accuracy and democratic charisma. I am not here today to argue whether or not global warming is an issue. It is. Just like violence, drugs, AIDS, poverty and Lady Gaga, global warming is one of those social problems that is in need of a rapid and simple elimination.

So far, no one has discovered a foolproof plan to make this happen, but one thing I can say for certain is that most of what you are doing is not affecting the climate. If the entire world switched to green cars, green household products and green materials, it would not substantially affect global warming. Allow me to explain.

The entire premise of the global warming catastrophe focuses on the idea that carbon dioxide emissions, CO2, are polluting the atmosphere and making the world warm up much faster than it is supposed to. According to Noam Mohr in the August 2005 report, “A New Global Warming Strategy” on www.earthsave.org, there is little denying that humans produce more CO2 than all other greenhouse gasses combined. We are to blame for putting an abundance of CO2 into the air due to our vehicle emissions, our power plant pollutants and our aerosol chemicals. It would seem that the answer is simple; stop using gas guzzling cars, switch to green energy, use natural products and thus reduce carbon dioxide emissions. In Mohr’s article, data found by a number of scientists, including Dr. James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, CO2 is not the main cause of global warming, and, in fact, it is hardly even having an effect. There are other greenhouse gases present in the air that treat heat to a much more extreme degree.

Mohr states that the number one most potent greenhouse gas is methane. Methane gas is generally overlooked in the fight to stop global warming even though scientists generally accept that it is one of the biggest catalysts. The problem is, in order to switch from focusing on carbon emissions to methane emissions, our lifestyles would take some serious re-evaluation.

According to Richard Harris in the Jan. 26, 2010 article, “Methane Causes Vicious Cycle in Global Warming” on www.npr.com, the source of methane comes from a variety of places, including wetlands, rice, garbage dumps and especially animals, namely cows. In fact, according to Drew Shindell at NASA’S Goddard Institute, methane gas has increased 150 percent since the pre-industrial period and its heating potential is 60 percent that of CO2.

Animals, such as livestock, are largely to blame for methane emissions. According to a 400-page report conducted by the United Nations and cited by Geoffrey Lean in the Dec. 6, 2006 article, “Cow ‘Emissions’ More Damaging to Planet than CO2″ from www.independent.co.uk, livestock is to blame for 18 percent of global warming gases, which is more than cars and airplanes and all other CO2 emitting transportation methods combined. However, the fix for this problem doesn’t entail buying a Prius or switching to natural products. According to Mohr, the easiest way to cut methane emissions is to consume less meat and the most effective method is to start advocating vegetarian diets. Chew on that, America.

Unfortunately, this is not something than can be purchased or done easily. I certainly do not want to switch to a vegetarian diet. I’m sorry, vegetarians, but animals are delicious. Should this revelation drive everyone to switch to a self-righteous, smug, hippie mentality on animal ethics and food choices? No. We have places for people like that. It’s called Lawrence.

All we Americans really need to do is start focusing more on the advocacy of sustainable farming, while reducing the amount of red meat we eat, and especially the amount we waste, to allow the environment to regulate its natural gases. Global warming is a convoluted mess of facts and ideas, but by focusing on actual culprits and not blatant misconceptions about the causes, the environment will truly see the real benefits.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/01/25/column-global-warming-should-focus-on-methane-not-co2/feed/0U. Texas professors shine light on alternate fuel sourcehttp://uwire.com/2011/01/25/u-texas-professors-shine-light-on-alternate-fuel-source/
http://uwire.com/2011/01/25/u-texas-professors-shine-light-on-alternate-fuel-source/#commentsTue, 25 Jan 2011 16:48:43 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=22586Two U. Texas professors have discovered a process to harness sunlight to split hydrogen from water and use it as a fuel source.

The process could eventually lead to the creation of a clean, affordable and renewable fuel that could potentially eliminate oil dependence.

“It’s certainly better for the environment,” said Son Hoang, a chemical engineering graduate student working on the project. “The only product is water, as opposed to gasoline, which produces carbon dioxide.”

Chemistry professor Allen Bard and chemical engineering professor Buddie Mullins lead the team of UT researchers.

The process mimics photosynthesis by harnessing the power of sunlight to split hydrogen and oxygen from water. This newly separated hydrogen can be used as a direct source of fuel, Son said.

Although researchers have made progress, there is a long way to go, Son said.

Bard and Mullins have been able to successfully complete their experiment, but there is still much work to do to stabilize it. The experiment is still very unstable and was only successful for a number of hours in lab conditions, Son said.

“The material being used is extremely unstable,” Son said. “It’s still not even in ideal condition.”

The team must find a material to split hydrogen from water that allows the process to go as smoothly as possible.

Chemical engineering graduate student Hoang Dang said in order for their experiment to continue to grow, they must find a sunlight-capturing material high in efficiency and in abundance that is stable enough to withstand the experiment for lengthy periods of time.

Converting to hydrogen as the main source of fuel would help reduce our carbon footprint by 30 to 40 percent, said Raymond Orbach, director of UT’s Energy Institute and the U.S. Department of Energy’s first Under Secretary for Science.

Orbach said when he thinks about the progress of the researchers, he is very hopeful and excited.

Although Bard and Mullins have received funding through the energy institute from ConocoPhilips and other private organizations, they still need much more to continue and complete their research, Orbach said.

The team received $2.5 million in grants from the National Science Foundation and U.S. Department of Energy to research methods to convert water into hydrogen fuel.

Orbach said the ultimate goal of the team is to receive $5 million in grants for the next five years. He said if that happens, the development of the new source of fuel will not be far off.

The California Institute of Technology, the University of California, Berkeley and the Massachusetes Institute of Technology are also working on similar experiments of their own, Orbach said. He said the competition creates a healthy challenge to be first and the best.

“I personally believe we have the best staff,” Orbach said. “I put my money on Al Bard and Buddie Mullins.”

Freegans, a term that combines free and vegan, dumpster dive for food, though not always because they need to, but to make a political statement about the wastefulness of society.

“Freeganism — it’s a consciousness about the system of consumption in the post-industrialized world and praxis built on that knowledge,” said freegan Gio Andollo, who volunteers to show media the ropes of freeganism and dumpster diving for freegan.info.

Though always frugal with his money and resources, Andollo said he never considered himself a “consumerist-type person.” In the beginning, he mostly dove for economic reasons.

“(Dumpster diving is) something we’re seeing some people do not by choice, just because of the economy and the way it is,” said Colin Baumgartner, communication director from the Mid-Ohio Food Bank. “Folks are struggling to make ends meet.”

Jordan Myers, a second-year in zoology, wouldn’t call himself a freegan, but strives toward the philosophy of freeganism.

“I’ve been a vegan for two years and that’s a very huge part of my life,” Myers said. “I’m also an anarchist, so the whole freegan part, the whole anti-consumerism, basically sticking it to capitalism and not buying anything — that really appeals to me.”

He volunteers for the Columbus chapter of Food Not Bombs, a non-hierarchal organization that dumpster dives for food and then donates it to the less fortunate.

“Diving for food, you associate that more with the homeless or less fortunate,” Myers said. “But there are also just some trendy and frugal people out there who just really want to appreciate everything.”

Trash tours, organized within the freegan.info group and the Food Not Bombs organization, happen during the night when most businesses are closed. They are normally planned out ahead in groups and are scheduled a couple times a month.

Items such as potatoes, celery, bread, dairy products and even eggs can be found in the dumpster and, according to the freegans, are perfectly edible.

Whatever food that freegans or the volunteers of Food Not Bombs find are used the next day for a potluck.

Freegans mostly find packaged foods and although not all freegans are actually vegan, most tend to stay clear of meat products due to risk of bacteria.

“We take the food back to the site and prepare a meal,” Myers said. “(Food Not Bombs) volunteers eat alongside the less fortunate and talk and get to know each other.”

On Myers’ first trash tour, he was taken to several different grocery stores on state Route 161.

Myers always knew food was wasted, but was still shocked when he and his friend were able to fill his car to the brim with food found from dumpsters.

“Every single point of my car was full to the point that (my friend) was stooped over the console with food on his neck,” Myers said. “I was just blown away because we didn’t pick up all the food and we only hit (some) places.”

There was another instance when he was able to get several commercial-sized bags of bakery items from a grocery store.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s website, almost 100 billion pounds of food is wasted each year in the U.S.

“There’s no such thing as ‘away.’ It doesn’t just disappear, it’s somewhere,” Andollo said. “We don’t have an unlimited amount of space to put all of our waste.”

Dumpster diving is not the only part of the freegan philosophy.

Andollo said hitchhiking, or “couchsurfing” (a network of travelers who lend a couch to those who need one) are perfect examples of the freegan philosophy.

“What freeganism is about is not just the consciousness, but then using that knowledge to influence the way we live our lives. It’s not just consumption; it’s everything,” Andollo said. “There’s the whole reduce, reuse and recycle (idea).”

It’s legal to dumpster dive in Columbus, according to the Columbus Police Department, as long as there are no signs stating that it is private property or the dumpsters are not fenced in.

“I don’t really care to look up the laws,” Myers said. “If it was illegal, I would keep diving, regardless.”

While most people would worry about bacteria and food poisoning from dumpster diving, Myers has never heard of anyone getting sick. Andollo said what is disgusting is how much food is wasted.

“As long as the food is properly washed and cooked, you can avoid such complications,” Andollo said. “The same is true whether you got a food item off the shelf or the curb.”

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/01/24/freegans-salvage-food-dumpster-diving/feed/0Alcoholic drinks to be recycled as ethanol car fuelhttp://uwire.com/2011/01/21/alcoholic-drinks-to-be-recycled-as-ethanol-car-fuel/
http://uwire.com/2011/01/21/alcoholic-drinks-to-be-recycled-as-ethanol-car-fuel/#commentsFri, 21 Jan 2011 21:25:12 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=22502On Jan. 6, The Associated Press announced that recently banned alcoholic energy drinks, such as Four Loko, will be recycled into ethanol fuel.

Four Loko gained notoriety after numerous individuals reported suffering alcohol poisoning from it and was issued a warning letter by the Food and Drug Administration on Nov. 17. The letter came after an investigation found that the alcoholic energy drinks lead to a false wide-awake drunk experience — you’re buzzed but still feel entirely cognizant.

Of course, we already knew that what many were calling “liquid cocaine” and “blackout in a can” was basically rocket fuel for your brain, but it’s not the Loko that will be making cars run. The truth is that all safely consumable alcohol contains ethanol alcohol. Technically, you’re getting your car “lok’d” every time you tank up with ethanol.

According to the same report, the ethanol is currently being recycled by three recycling plants. That means you can’t just take all those cans you stashed away in the co-op fridge and pour them straight into your car. Of course, if you’re a graduate chemistry student who has a lot of time and money this semester, you could potentially create a Four Loko mobile, but no such creation has been reported.

Furthermore, one of the plants, MXI Environmental Services, is trying to recycle almost everything involved in the packaging and shipping of the drinks. In addition to the ethanol that will be sold off to be blended into gasoline, the company has said it will also be selling the aluminum cans, cardboard boxes, water component and shipping pallets.

Once the aluminum is sold, it will take approximately 30 days before it’s placed back on the shelves as a shiny new beer.

With the introduction of vehicles such as the Chevrolet Volt, Nissan Leaf, and Toyota Prius, you now have a handful of choices of hybrid-electric vehicles. If the motivation for these vehicles is reducing our dependence on oil, how do they compare to one another? What about reducing greenhouse gas emissions? And on top of all of this, are the costs worth the benefits? Given the potentially harmful environmental impacts of continuing an oil- and gasoline-based automobile industry, a professor at Carnegie Mellon U. has been working to answer these questions.

Jeremy Michalek, a professor in the departments of engineering and public policy and mechanical engineering, has been working with colleagues to study the various effects of driving hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) on the environment. They are interested in the benefits as well as the disadvantages, which may vary depending on numerous factors such as battery type, distance driven, and where the electricity used to charge the car battery comes from.

Something that the average consumer may not think about is that the emissions associated with driving these electric vehicles include more than what comes out of the tailpipe. Emissions are released many times during the life cycle of an electric vehicle: from smokestacks of factories that make the vehicles, as well as the power plants that make the electricity to charge the vehicle. Michalek explains that switching from a gasoline to a plug-in vehicle changes the types of emissions and where they are released.

“The nice thing about electricity is that you can make it in lots of different ways and in different locations. Gasoline comes from oil. Sure, you can make it synthetically, but it basically comes from oil. Electricity can be made in so many different ways, including renewable ways,” Michalek said. Through the use of optimization models, he and his research group looked at which combination of battery properties — like type, capacity, and operating method — resulted in the best balance between greenhouse gas emissions and cost. They compared vehicles that were essentially identical in every way except for the powertrain options; thus, any effects that resulted from a change in battery properties could be assigned to that particular change.

The results of this study, which were recently published in the Journal of Mechanical Design, found that the size of the battery pack played an important role in greenhouse gas emissions and cost. Larger battery packs allow more miles to be driven on electricity, but those additional miles do not outweigh the amount of greenhouse gas emissions associated with the production of those batteries. Smaller battery packs, however, allow fewer miles to be driven on electricity, but are significantly cheaper, so there is a larger reduction in greenhouse gas emissions per dollar spent on the battery. Therefore, considering both economics and greenhouse gas emissions, a moderate- to small-sized battery pack was found to be optimal.

In an interview with the website Electric Vehicle World, Michalek explained, “It will be a good transition for people to start buying these HEVs and PHEVs with smaller battery packs because batteries will start being produced more frequently, and we can move quicker down the battery learning curve and hopefully make them cheaper.” As the technology on battery production improves, larger battery packs would therefore become more economical and have an even larger impact on greenhouse gas emissions.

Michalek has presented policy briefs to Congress members in Washington to make sure that people who are involved with energy policymaking are aware of the findings. Spreading this knowledge to make policymakers and the public more aware of the available technology is important in moving society toward a more sustainable way of living. The next step, Michalek said, will be in estimating the value of the benefits of electric vehicles. Quantifying all of the benefits will help us determine as a society whether or not it is worth the switch to a more electricity-based automobile market.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/01/17/study-evaluates-the-impacts-of-different-hybrid-electric-vehicles/feed/0Column: A green tax to earn more greenhttp://uwire.com/2011/01/14/column-a-green-tax-to-earn-more-green/
http://uwire.com/2011/01/14/column-a-green-tax-to-earn-more-green/#commentsFri, 14 Jan 2011 15:04:35 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=22099Everyone knows that rising gas prices are a result of the increase in the price of crude oil. Presently, the cheapest gas you can buy in Philadelphia is more than $3.00 per gallon. However, the federal government needs to give serious consideration to levying a national “green” tax on the price of gas. That’s right, it would be beneficial for us to be paying more for our gas. As argued by Thomas Friedman in a New York Times op-ed called “Real Men Tax Gas,” a national gas tax could be used to pay down the debt and invest in green technology.

While it’s true that no one wants to pay more for gas, there’s no doubting the fact that higher gas prices force consumers to conserve gas. Another benefit of levying a national gas tax is that the money can be used to invest in alternative energy. In this country, nuclear energy has a stigma that has been hard to shake due the disasters at Three Mile Island in 1979 and Chernobyl, Ukraine in 1986, but we should not turn our back on a method of energy production that doesn’t rely on burning hydrocarbons – releasing no greenhouse gases. Currently, nuclear energy supplies 20 percent of America’s energy needs, and at the same time is responsible for over 70 percent of the U.S.’s total renewable energy production., The revenue generated from a national “green” tax could be used to develop other methods of renewable energy production – such as solar, wind and geothermal energy – to diversify America’s energy portfolio.

A common kneejerk reaction to hearing about new taxes is to whine and grumble about the tyranny of an oversized government that is killing jobs and taking money away from the workingman. Here’s why a “green” tax is necessary. First of all, America’s addiction to oil is an issue of national security. T. Boone Pickens, who founded Mesa Oil but now invests in alternative forms of energy production, has declared that our addiction to oil “threatens our economy, our environment and our national security.” If we don’t curb our use of oil, our addiction will cost us $10 trillion over the next decade. Rather than send astronomical amounts of money to countries that don’t even like us, we need to invest in green energy now so that we can save money later.

Additionally, we have lost millions of jobs due to outsourcing, automation and the financial collapse that plunged us into a recession. For a country struggling with unemployment that currently wavers around 9.4 percent, investing in green energy would certainly create a lot of jobs here at home and revitalize our economy. Finally, we can use some of the money levied from a green tax to help pay down our national debt. The national debt is over $14 trillion, so we need to start generating revenue. For the sake of our future, we need a “green” gas tax because success doesn’t come without sacrifice.

Golden has been studying the fluid permeability of sea ice, which is a measure of how easily brine—produced from high concentrations of sodium chloride—moves through the ice. This liquid laces itself throughout the ice structure of the water when it becomes frozen.

“When the volume fraction of brine inclusions is below 5 percent, the sea ice becomes impermeable to flow, whereas when it exceeds 5 percent, pathways throughout the ice are created which allows fluid to travel through,” Golden said.

Golden has named this the Rule of Five, as 5 percent is a critical point, acting like an on-off switch for fluid flow.

“The important processes happening within the ice structures are not properly being accounted for in the latest computer models—the importance of our work is to improve the predictions of the sea ice’s response to global warming, which, in turn, will help us to develop a reliable climate model,” Golden said.

The Arctic Ocean has one of the densest degrees of sea life present. The complex food webs beneath the ocean’s surface affect the algae that live inside the fluid inclusions.

“Nutrients are supplied to this algae through this water movement when it flows through the pathways, which is all controlled by the Rule of Five,” he said.

Golden has worked alongside Cynthia Furse, professor of electrical and computer engineering, in developing the project.

“We wrote this proposal together several years ago, both recognizing that engineering was important for practical and theoretical aspects,” Furse said. “We make a great team.”

Golden and his team will explore electrical elements of ice in May on a new expedition to the Arctic, funded by the National Science Foundation.

“We are doing all the mathematics behind this to develop theoretical models in order to understand the sea levels—which are sometimes difficult to do,” Golden said.

However, if a bill is passed through the Oregon state legislature, these options may only be reduced down to one.

According to a draft bill called LC688 that will be introduced during this year’s legislative session, the use of single-use checkout bags would be prohibited except in certain cases, which may pave the way for Oregon to become the first state in the nation to adopt a statewide ban on the use of paper and plastic checkout bags.

“I grew up in this state, and when I was growing up, litter was a big problem and that led to the passage of the bottle bill when I was a kid,” Sen. Mark Hass (D-Beaverton), who helped draft the bill, said. “With the passage of the bill, Oregon became the highest recycling state in the country, and there were no more beer cans or bottles on the beaches or roadways. Unfortunately, over the last 10 years, plastic bags have taken refuge on Oregon’s roadways and beaches, so I think it’s encumbered upon us to be responsible and get those things off of there.”

The ban would also allow the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality to impose civil penalties on retailers caught distributing plastic bags, prohibit local governments from imposing charges on checkout bags and repeal the current statute that requires retail establishments to offer both paper and plastic bags to consumers. Although the ban would be applied to retailers statewide, it would provide exemptions for pharmacies and food establishments, but not to non-checkout bags such as those found in the produce sections of grocery stores. The ban would also require paper bags to contain at least 40 percent recycled fibers in order to be used at checkout and prohibit local governments from enacting similar individual bans. If the measure is successfully passed through the state legislature, the measure may be in effect as early as November 2011 and require consumers to pay at least five cents to purchase recycled paper checkout bags.

Other states and individual cities have already adopted bills that have addressed the ban of plastic checkout bags.

In 2007, the city of San Francisco spearheaded the campaign by adopting a bill that banned the use of plastic bags by large chain stores. Soon afterward, other California cities, including Malibu, Palo Alto and Fairfax, followed suit. Last January, the District of Columbia began charging consumers a nickel for every paper or plastic checkout bag that was used. Three days ago, Italy, which has one of the highest rates of bag consumption in Europe, instituted a mandate that requires stores to only offer biodegradable, cloth or paper bags. In Tanzania, anyone who is caught importing or selling a bag thinner than 30 microns could face up to six months in jail and a heavy fine of 1.5 million Tanzanian shillings, which is equivalent to $1,019.

“We here in Oregon pride ourselves around environmental stewardship, but in a lot of ways, we’re kind of behind the times in comparison to a lot of other countries around the world,” said Gus Gates, the Oregon policy coordinator for the Surfrider Foundation.

However, not everyone agrees with the checkout bag ban. Tim Shestek, a American Chemistry Council spokesman, said plastic checkout bags are capable of being recycled and can be reused for the production of other products, such as construction products and park benches.

“The ban proposals and the one that is being proposed in Oregon and California … is not a consumer or business-friendly approach,” Shestek said. “We believe that there are better ways to address the issue. If we’re going to try to reduce the amount of waste disposal and litter, then the effort ought to be focused on trying to enhance recycling opportunities so that people have convenient, local options to take these products back and made into new ones.”

In addition, the push for banning plastic checkout bags or instituting fees for it has hit several impediments over the past several years. Last January, the Los Angeles County Superior Court affirmed a judgment made against the city of Manhattan Beach’s efforts to ban the sale and use of plastic bags. The court’s judgment, which ruled in favor of the San Francisco-based Save the Plastic Bag Coalition, stated that the ban would “inevitably result in increased use of paper bags, which has a greater significant negative environmental effects than plastic bags.” By banning plastic bags, the court stated that the increased use of plastic bags would increase the consumption of energy and water and emission of greenhouse gases.

“Plastic and paper bags each have negative impacts on the environment,” the court’s ruling said. “It is well known that paper bags require more energy to manufacture and recycle and regenerate effluent during these processes. It is also known that paper bags are bulkier and heavier than plastic bags.”

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/01/05/oregon-bill-may-ban-single-use-bags-at-checkout/feed/0BYU showcases its greener sidehttp://uwire.com/2011/01/04/byu-showcases-its-greener-side/
http://uwire.com/2011/01/04/byu-showcases-its-greener-side/#commentsTue, 04 Jan 2011 14:16:34 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=21631Just like a stage, much more is going on behind the curtain of BYU’s conservation initiatives than is seen by the audience, or in this case, the students and faculty.

A plethora of blue recycling bins cover campus and mechanisms are provided in cafeterias to limit food waste, but most students don’t know what is actually going on behind the scenes.

“There is a team of people on campus committed to the concept of sustainability,” said Dean Wright, director of dining services, describing the processes and methods of BYU grounds and recycling. “Sustainability is part of our culture.”

Machines called pulpers are located in the Wilkinson Center, Missionary Training Center, Cannon Commons Center, Morris Center and Culinary Support Center. The Culinary Support Center is as close as possible to a zero waste food production plant in the state of Utah, according to Wright.

“BYU has been involved with the pulpers since 1984,” Wright said. “They were one of the first schools in the country to initiate the pulpers.”

These machines grind food and extract moisture. Even napkins go into the pulpers because they are biodegradable, according to Wright.

After the moisture is taken out of the pulp, it is then shipped to a holding bin and picked up by one of more than 200 trucks used by the grounds crew and taken to a compost pile in Mapleton.

Composting is a more intensive project than first glance, as each bucket of food waste is mixed with about 13 buckets of woodchips from pallets and trees or leaves, and then “cooked,” according to Ron Peterman, grounds director.

“For compost, you need oxygen, nitrogen and water,” Peterman said. “When you get those three elements, it begins to cook. We like to keep it between 140-160 degrees, 180 degrees at the very maximum.”

During this time, grounds employees turn the soil to make sure it is cooked evenly. They then mix the compost with varying amounts of sand, depending on where the finished compost will be used for around campus. It is sometimes put on top soil, which holds in moisture and creates a water savings of 33 percent, according to Peterman.

“They have figured out how much of each they want in the soil underneath the grass on campus, how much they want under flower beds, so they will mix soil specifically for those plots, and then put it down which reduces water usage,” said Bill Rudy, recycling coordinator.

BYU makes about 3,000 tons of compost per year.

As recycling coordinator, Rudy also said BYU recycles five to six tons per day.

Rudy said they started the facility in 1990 with the old computer printout paper with holes on the side in mind. Although that is now a thing of the past, paper is still the main item recycled in the facility, according to Rudy.

The facility also recycles about 22 tons of bottles per year, plus cans and cardboard.
According to the recycling training video for recycling facility employees, “Over 4,000 recycling bins [are] used for collecting white paper, newspaper, mixed or colored paper, aluminum cans and plastic bottles and are located around campus for this purpose.”

These 4,000 bins do not cover every office on campus although they are in every building. They are located in every faculty and staff office newer than the Joseph F. Smith Building, but the older offices must request a bin, according to Rudy.

Rudy said the recycling saves the university money, as it takes about $33 to take a ton to the landfill. When recycling 1,400 tons per year, it comes to about $46,000 saved if there was no recycling at all at BYU. There can be additional savings or costs depending on the price of scrap paper.

Instead of the trash, the recycling goes to different places. Rudy said the newspaper goes to Salt Lake City to make insulation for houses, the cardboard gets made back into cardboard and the other paper can go to anywhere in the world, as far as China.

BYU still can do better, however, and Rudy said students and faculty recycle about as much as they throw away.

The mission of the BYU physical plant grounds section is: “…to provide an atmosphere of excellence and serenity, to assist individuals in their quest for eternal life by providing outdoor facilities, indoor plantings and services that are neat, clean and beautiful, hence creating an optimum atmosphere for learning and inspiration.”

Peterman said creating that atmosphere is the driving force behind their actions.

]]>http://uwire.com/2011/01/04/byu-showcases-its-greener-side/feed/0Column: US needs to set example with green policieshttp://uwire.com/2010/12/16/column-us-needs-to-set-example-with-green-policies/
http://uwire.com/2010/12/16/column-us-needs-to-set-example-with-green-policies/#commentsThu, 16 Dec 2010 17:20:01 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=21321Ever since 1997, the earth and the USA have been in dire need of couple’s therapy. Forget about the idea of the earth as a mother for a minute. Picture the earth, instead, as an Anne Hathaway-esque, well-meaning heiress. That makes the USA the jackass potential boyfriend who is not only afraid of a commitment, but who also siphons off a large portion of her trust fund.

Sound silly? Maybe. Sleazy? Definitely. In 1997, the U.S. and China, the world’s two largest producers of greenhouse gases, refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol. It was, however, ratified by 55 parties, including the majority of the European Union. The ratification of the Protocol by Russia in 2004 brought the total to the 55 percent of nations in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) needed to put the global environmental treaty into effect.

But it is now the end of 2010. There have been two large conferences on global climate change, and a third scheduled by the end of next year in South Africa. With the Kyoto Protocol expiring in 2012, Japan is refusing to consider any measure or continuation of the Protocol that does not include China and the U.S., believing it to be unfair to the international committee. The U.S. is still refusing to commit to a binding international treaty, or even the guidelines outlined in 1997.

In a way, we are leading the way for countries such as China and India to stringently oppose the idea of an internationally binding treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

But China is doing something to curb its own pollution. The Asian nation is at a crossroads in its development after its pre-Olympic five-year plan to clean its air. Generally, there are two ways for a large nation to industrialize – the way the U.S. did, with no regard for the long-term consequences of its development, or after the fashion of the European Union and Japan, which push towards models of sustainability. China is currently working on high-speed trains and cleaner energy research, understanding that a country with 20 percent of the world’s population cannot environmentally support what they see as the “American” lifestyle – big houses and SUV’s.

India holds an obligation to many smaller, surrounding island nations that risk being submerged. It is opposed to being locked into an internationally binding legal arrangement, but India has also asserted that it takes its domestic obligations seriously, and will do so when formulating its domestic environmental and industrial development policy.

But in the U.S., climate change does not yet put homes at risk. It has not yet tarnished our landscapes – at least not in any way that the government or the general public notices. From Manifest Destiny to the Industrial Revolution, the country has stringently committed itself to the idea that the land and the earth are meant to be used for every resource we can extract from them. Fields are just unfinished parking lots, and the bones of the forests that once covered much of the continent are places to build identical neighborhoods of identical homes and strip malls. And all of this is fine, because we have some scattered national parks to remind us of the ideal of the frontier yet to be conquered.

Even though Obama came into office asserting that this country would start taking the environment seriously, it has yet to be seen. We still have not even made the token gesture of ratifying the Kyoto Protocol. Meanwhile, Kristianstad, Sweden, known for producing Absolut vodka, has managed to wean itself entirely off of all fossil fuels. That is 80,000 people, within the city and the surrounding countryside, dedicating themselves to actively pursuing alternative energy sources from biogas plants, effectively reducing their carbon footprint and creating a new sector of business and jobs. Small island nations and African countries are pushing not only for the international agreement, but also for a commitment from all developed and developing nations to cut their emissions by over 50 percent, as well as to cap the increased temperature at 1.5 degrees above industrial revolution levels.

It is beyond time for the U.S. to commit on the international level to the UNFCCC, and to actively pursue domestic initiatives, instead of continuing this abusive and neglect-filled relationship with the world we live in.

]]>http://uwire.com/2010/12/16/column-us-needs-to-set-example-with-green-policies/feed/0Study: Farm drainage creates ‘dead zones’ in Gulf of Mexicohttp://uwire.com/2010/12/01/study-farm-drainage-creates-%e2%80%98dead-zones%e2%80%99-in-gulf-of-mexico/
http://uwire.com/2010/12/01/study-farm-drainage-creates-%e2%80%98dead-zones%e2%80%99-in-gulf-of-mexico/#commentsWed, 01 Dec 2010 16:27:12 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=20993Corn and soybean farmers in the upper Mississippi River are growing more than they intend: a thriving crop of nitrogen-fertilized algae blooms in the Gulf of Mexico.

A study recently published in the Journal of Environmental Quality by researchers from Cornell U. and U. Illinois at Urbana-Champaign found that tile drainage systems — which help to drain excess water from the soil subsurface — in upper Mississippi farmlands are the biggest contributors of nitrogen runoff into the Gulf of Mexico.

Runoff has been identified as a major contributor to “seasonal hypoxia,” also known as dead zones. Each summer, nitrogen-fertilized algae blooms deplete oxygen and suffocate other life forms over thousands of square miles, an area in the Gulf of Mexico that often rivals the size of New Jersey.

Currently, there are between 400 and 500 identified dead zones throughout the world, most of which are associated with waters near a shoreline, where there is usually a major river draining the continent.

“The near-shore waters in the ocean are among the most productive,” said Prof. Laurie Drinkwater, horticulture, a co-author of the paper. “We rely on those areas for a lot of important fisheries, particularly shellfish . . . But this runoff also has many consequences for biodiversity and the ecosystem function as well.”

To estimate nitrogen inputs and outputs, the researchers constructed a database that spanned from 1997 to 2006 and included data on crop yields, livestock, fertilizer, human populations and other information from 1,768 counties in the area.

The database also included nitrate concentrations and their flow into streams and rivers from 153 of these counties. Computer modeling revealed that the dominant source of nitrogen loss into the Mississippi came from fertilized cornfields on tile-drained watersheds in the upper Mississippi River basin.

The Mississippi River basin produces more corn and soybeans than anywhere else in the world and covers 40 percent of the continental United States.

“Over time, with a lot of research and looking at the patterns in the loading of nitrate in the streams and rivers that drain to the basin, we’ve been able to pinpoint the locations that contribute most of the nitrogen and also identify the sources, which are primarily agriculture,” Drinkwater said.

The tile drainage system is an important engineering aspect of the basin, according to Drinkwater, because the soils in the area are naturally very poorly drained. However the system causes water to move more quickly out of the field and into streams and rivers — a major problem when associated with the heavy use of nitrogen containing fertilizer.

Drinkwater said solutions to the problem include modifying practices in areas that rely on tile drainage, as well as “promoting practices such as cover cropping and diversifying crop rotations, as well as other strategies that occur outside the field such as buffers along waterways to try to catch the nitrogen before it gets into the rivers and streams.”

Prof. Mark David, natural resources and environmental sciences, University of Illinois, is the paper’s lead author. Prof. Gregory McIsaac, natural resources and environmental sciences, University of Illinois, was also a co-author. The paper was funded by the National Science Foundation.

]]>http://uwire.com/2010/12/01/study-farm-drainage-creates-%e2%80%98dead-zones%e2%80%99-in-gulf-of-mexico/feed/0Reusable bags aren’t as green as they seemhttp://uwire.com/2010/11/30/reusable-bags-aren%e2%80%99t-as-green-as-they-seem/
http://uwire.com/2010/11/30/reusable-bags-aren%e2%80%99t-as-green-as-they-seem/#commentsTue, 30 Nov 2010 21:31:16 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=20948The decision between paper and plastic has recently began to include the choice of reusable, a $1 option many people are willing to take in order to reduce their impact on the environment.

But reusable grocery bags, made to be used multiple times for shopping, may not be as healthy or environmentally friendly as people once thought.

“The Tampa Tribune” recently investigated and tested reusable grocery bags sold at Wal-Mart, Target and East Coast grocery chains. This investigation spurred the Food and Drug Administration to launch its own investigation into reusable bags.

The testers found unsafe levels of lead in reusable grocery bags that were manufactured in China and sold at Wal-Mart, Target and the East Coast grocery chains Winn-Dixie, Publix and Sweetbay. Lead is found in laminated reusable bags with large print or images to make colors more vibrant.

Lead is a toxic metal that can cause serious health problems in children younger than 6 years old and adults who are regularly exposed to high levels of lead. Lead poisoning in children can cause behavioral problems, damage to the brain and nervous system, hearing problems, headaches and slowed growth. Lead poisoning in adults can cause reproductive problems, high blood pressure, hypertension, nerve disorders, memory problems, and muscle and joint pain.

While the recent study did not show any indication of an immediate health threat to the public, lead in reusable bags could possibly contaminate the food products kept inside them and leach into landfills once a consumer disposes of the bag. The researchers found that in the long-term, the lead from reusable grocery bags could seep into groundwater after disposal and, over time, paint from the bag could flake off and come into contact with food.

Wal-Mart and Target have not recalled their reusable bags and recently released statements to dispel any health concerns.

Wal-Mart tested its bags did not find levels as high as the Tribune’s test and the company plans on selling more basic and plain versions of its bag. Target also remained confident in its testing methods. In response to the Tribune’s story, Safeway re-tested all its reusable bags and found them to be lead-free.

Reusable grocery bags are a popular alternative to using plastic and paper bags, and some cities are considering outright banning one-use bags. While the City of Eugene is not considering a ban on plastic bags, the City of Portland is. Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., and other U.S. cities, consumers who use plastic bags are charged extra when they don’t bring their reusable grocery bags.

This would be a good option instead of banning plastic bags entirely, University junior Yufei Chen said.

“I think it’s a good idea to pay for it,” she said.

U. Oregon junior Elizabeth Shepard said she uses plastic bags at home as garbage bags.

“You can use those bags at home for other things,” she said. “Banning them isn’t a good idea.”

Other U. Oregon students said they had a hard time remembering to bring their reusable bags with them when grocery shopping.

“I never have them with me to use them,” senior Sarah Kanthack said.

Consumers should also focus on bacteria, which can form on the bottom of reusable grocery bags, when considering their health. Health experts recommend that consumers regularly wash their reusable grocery bags to prevent the formation of bacteria and E. coli. However, the catch is that washing reusable grocery bags uses energy and water, making them less environmentally friendly than their original purpose.

]]>http://uwire.com/2010/11/30/reusable-bags-aren%e2%80%99t-as-green-as-they-seem/feed/0Study: Dire global warming messages raise skepticismhttp://uwire.com/2010/11/24/study-dire-global-warming-messages-raise-skepticism/
http://uwire.com/2010/11/24/study-dire-global-warming-messages-raise-skepticism/#commentsWed, 24 Nov 2010 13:20:40 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=20827Researchers at U. California-Berkeley have shown that apocalyptic messages concerning global warming backfire in campaigns attempting to promote public awareness of climate change, according to a paper to be published in Psychological Science this January.

Through two studies, co-authors Robb Willer, assistant professor of sociology at UC Berkeley and Matthew Feinberg, a UC Berkeley graduate student of psychology, showed that, by contradicting people’s basic beliefs about the world’s justice and stability, grim representations of climate change lead individuals to greater skepticism in global warming and a decreased desire to reduce their carbon footprint.

The first study showed that individuals with “strong just world beliefs” – people who believe the world is fundamentally fair – are more dramatically affected by ominous global warming messages than their less rosy-eyed counterparts, Feinberg said.

Researchers tested 97 undergraduates’ basic sense of justice in the world, and then posed a series of questions about their beliefs in global warming. Students later returned to the lab to read either a positive article emphasizing human ingenuity as a source for change or one concluding that global warming would spiral out of control.

Participants reading the negative message grew more skeptical across the board, while those exposed to positive messages expressed greater belief in the veracity of global warming than they had on the initial test. Individuals with strong just world beliefs became dramatically more skeptical than their peers, while those with low just world beliefs were minimally affected.

The second study illustrated that people primed to believe in a just world became more skeptical of global warming and would be less willing to reduce their carbon footprint than those primed to believe the world is unjust.

According to Jesse Jenkins, energy and climate policy director at the Oakland-based Breakthrough Institute, a public policy think tank, focusing on productive action rather than the dire consequences of inaction can prevent this unwillingness to believe in or act in response to global warming.

“(Members of the institute) have been arguing for some time that the messaging strategy of the progressive left has fallen into some kind of psychological trap,” said Nick Adams, policy director at the institute. “When you try to scare people about global warming you kind of paralyze their motivation to act, especially conservatives.”

However, contrary to this belief, Feinberg emphasized that while conservatism tends to be somewhat correlated with a just world belief, and thus with lack of action, the study showed that liberals and conservatives were affected by positive and negative messages in the same way.

“Statistically, we can’t say that because you’re a liberal or a conservative you’ll be more or less likely to believe (in global warming),” he said.

]]>http://uwire.com/2010/11/24/study-dire-global-warming-messages-raise-skepticism/feed/0Spike Lee discusses Katrina, oil spillhttp://uwire.com/2010/11/16/spike-lee-discusses-katrina-oil-spill/
http://uwire.com/2010/11/16/spike-lee-discusses-katrina-oil-spill/#commentsTue, 16 Nov 2010 16:44:47 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=20556The 5-foot-6-inch outspoken director Spike Lee made his presence felt on the stage at U. Texas on Sunday and focused on the ongoing corruption resulting from Hurricane Katrina in 2005 to the more recent British Petroleum oil spill.

“We still forget [the catastrophe] wasn’t really a hurricane,” said Lee after screening a segment of his latest documentary “If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise.” “It was the faulty levees and the work of the United States of America. The whole infrastructure of this country needs help. When you cut corners, people die. It’s the same with BP. People are going to die and get hurt? Fuck it. Make the money. There has to be some morals and ethics that go into capitalism in this country.”

About 600 members of the UT community attended the screening, which previously aired on HBO on Aug. 23, and a heated roundtable discussion featuring history and film professors as well as New Orleans native Camille Pluck, a psychology junior.

“Politics, class and racism will always permeate [New Orleans’] society,” Pluck said. “People always ask, ‘How can you love New Orleans if it’s so corrupt?’ And I respond, ‘How can you love America?’”

Lee filmed his latest documentary as a follow-up to the Peabody Award-winning 2006 documentary “When the Levees Broke.” Initially, Lee says, he finished the four-hour documentary before the BP oil spill but then went back to the Big Easy eight more times to follow the story. Both documentaries feature a plethora of first-person accounts that humanize the events.

“These aren’t documentaries — these are now part of American history,” said Douglas Brinkley, a noted history professor from Rice University who introduced Lee. “His Katrina and BP spill archives are important parts of documented oral history. I see him less as a filmmaker and more as one of our great truth-tellers, and we have so few of them.”

Included in his latest documentary are reports of BP initially blocking fly-overs and questions about the toxicity of the oil dispersants used.

The hour-long segment concluded with a montage of underwater oil leak footage from nearly every day of the three-month spill, followed by images of the blue and grey corpses strewn across the city after Katrina.

“I had no idea about the entirety of the problems in New Orleans,” said studio art sophomore Tara Alavi. “The rhetoric is so censored and his documentary is incredibly moving. I teared up during it. It made me want to take action and do what I can. I don’t know where to begin, but it opened my eyes to the magnitude of the problem.”

]]>http://uwire.com/2010/11/16/spike-lee-discusses-katrina-oil-spill/feed/0Column: Despite U.S. inaction, Massachusetts passes global warming lawshttp://uwire.com/2010/11/11/column-despite-u-s-inaction-massachusetts-passes-global-warming-laws/
http://uwire.com/2010/11/11/column-despite-u-s-inaction-massachusetts-passes-global-warming-laws/#commentsThu, 11 Nov 2010 15:39:49 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=20396As the UN’s 1997 Kyoto Protocol is set to expire in 2012, the international community has been busy debating the future of these policies aimed to reduce the impact of climate change. With 186 signatories to the protocol, the key industrial nations of China and the United States have remained hesitant to commit, slowing potential progress in this arena. The world watched in December 2009 as meetings of the UN’s Framework Committee on Climate Change failed to establish commitments beyond Kyoto, and again in July 2010, as the U.S. Senate eliminated cap and trade policies from the federal energy bill. While these events were disappointments for the environmental sector, such debates are expected to continue

Greenhouse gases do not stem from a point source that can be easily marked and reduced, and cover most industrial processes, transportation, and agricultural pursuits. In addition, the impacts of greenhouse gases apply to everyone, but vary in their effect by region along with the political and economic conditions under which they take place.

With a multitude of factors that need to be considered for accurate and efficient climate policy, a cohesive international plan is necessary, but difficult to establish. As nations face a slow and complex process to achieving these goals, many are hopeful, however, focusing energy on the state level. The state has the ability to adopt plans that closely analyze the areas that need improvement while considering the local communities, economies and infrastructures. Projects that are proposed can effectively work with existing legislation, making the most of the state’s resources and improving the overall quality of the state while reducing emissions. Massachusetts’s establishment of its own Global Warming Solutions Act (GWSA) in 2008, under Governor Patrick’s Administration, stands as a leading example of how this system can work and could help our country to succeed.

Massachusetts was one of the first states in the nation to seriously address the challenges of climate change, by realizing not only the need to incorporate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions in future planning, but to develop a “comprehensive regulatory program to address climate change” through the GWSA. Speaking with Massachusetts Representative Frank Smizik, chairman of the new House Committee on Global Warming and Climate Change, he explained that the state needed a capstone to existing programs at the time, such as the Green Jobs Act, Oceans Act, Clean Energy Biofuels Act, and Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which function throughout the Northeast states. Building upon these policies, the GWSA established the implementation plan to reduce emissions “between 10 percent and 25 percent below statewide 1990 GHG emission levels by 2020″ and “80 percent below statewide 1990 GHG emission levels by 2050.” These targets are aided with the Mandatory GHG Emissions Reporting Program under the Department of Environmental Protection for the state’s largest emitters. Starting in 2011, entities emitting over 25,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year will need state verification and eventually must face limitations on their emissions. Three years into the act, a great amount of research has been conducted by the state to identify crucial areas for reduction and low cost reduction, which will allow them to reach these goals.

From such research, new programs have also developed, such as GreenDot and the Low Carbon Fuel Standard, which aim to reduce transportation emissions while increasing smart growth and community access to public transit, walking trails, and bike paths. Transportation is currently the largest source of carbon-dioxide emissions in Massachusetts, but through these initiatives and the goals of the GWSA it can be effectively targeted in ways that are beneficial to the state, unlike a federal program might. Lee Dillard Adams, manager of the GWSA Implementation at Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, explained that in addition to addressing the needs of the public, groups developing the GWSA also work closely with business and utilities to make the implementation plan comprehensive. Adams believes that “if we’re on the forefront of these issues, we gain an economic advantage as the nation begins to make these transitions,” and that hopefully by promoting green jobs and technology the state can grow within these areas. Amid an economic downturn, these programs are beginning to reveal that not only are they useful in emission reductions, but they drastically improve the quality of life for Massachusetts citizens. Smizik reiterated the importance of working with the business community, as “jobs and clean energy are ways of moving the environmental aspects of this forward – it’s a positive future for everyone, not just environmentalists.” Already, they are seeing job growth in the energy sector in terms of local and state-wide conservation, increases in recycling and home retrofits, wind energy that will bring a variety of jobs building and selling turbines to other states, and innovative solar technologies.

Development within all of these areas inspires optimism among Massachusetts citizens about its future in reducing emissions by at least 10 percent in the 1990 baseline by 2020, if not going above and beyond. As these systems are implemented and economies grow in renewables, there will ultimately be a steady increase in the amount of emissions we are able to reduce, and hopefully, a transition away from our current modes of energy production. As these issues are inherently connected to a variety of sectors, Adams explained, “Political leadership is key to maintaining our progress and keeping these goals on track for areas of the state.” Massachusetts is raising the standards for state climate change policy, with hopes that others will learn from their models and establish its own plans. If they are lucky, however, federal policy might just happen to follow in their footsteps.

]]>http://uwire.com/2010/11/11/column-despite-u-s-inaction-massachusetts-passes-global-warming-laws/feed/0Study: Farming affects carbon levelshttp://uwire.com/2010/11/10/study-farming-affects-carbon-levels/
http://uwire.com/2010/11/10/study-farming-affects-carbon-levels/#commentsWed, 10 Nov 2010 13:15:10 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=20355For many years, experts around the world have been making strides toward curbing world hunger, but researchers at U. Minnesota and U. Wisconsin have found another bump in the road.

In a study, researchers explain expanding cropland has negative effects on nature’s ability to store carbon.

Using land for agricultural production presents a tradeoff between feeding more people and releasing greenhouse gasses into the air, according to the study, published in the November issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

As more land is cleared to grow food, natural carbon stocks — carbon stored in trees, soil and other forms of vegetation — are released into the atmosphere, Jon Foley, a co-author of the study, said.

While data was analyzed on a global scale, researchers found the most pressing problem to be in tropical regions, where carbon loss is nearly twice as much for every 100 acres farmed than it is in temperate regions.

Newly cleared land in the tropics releases almost three tons of carbon for every one ton of annual crop yield, compared with every ton cleared in a temperate zone, the study reports.

While the carbon released in tropic areas doubles, the amount of food crops yielded from newly cleared areas is only half of what it might be on existing farmland, said Paul West, a co-author of the study and a researcher at the Center for Limnology at the UW-Madison.

The researchers said they hope the study will illustrate the need to find new methods to increase food production without contributing more to climate change.

“We can do that for sure by focusing on our already productive agriculture lands and see[ing] how we can increase food production

without clearing new areas,” said Foley, who is also the director of the University’s Institute on the Environment.

The authors agreed that while the task at hand is not an easy one, it is possible.

“We can look for mixtures of conventional and organic methods that increase soil fertility, water availability to crops and even work to use better genetics and crop varieties,” Foley said.

“Some work has shown that for each climate zone around the world for any given crop, there is a whole range of current crop yields,” he said. “What that indicates is that management practices in these places can have a tremendous amount of influence on actual crop production around the world.”

While the solutions may seem clear, the process of implementing them worldwide may not be.

“I think we can pull it off and, ultimately, we have to,” Foley said. “By improving agriculture and our food system in other regions, we can take the pressure off our remaining tropical forests, helping to preserve them for future generations.”

]]>http://uwire.com/2010/11/10/study-farming-affects-carbon-levels/feed/0Column: College students can avoid waste toohttp://uwire.com/2010/11/03/column-college-students-can-avoid-waste-too/
http://uwire.com/2010/11/03/column-college-students-can-avoid-waste-too/#commentsWed, 03 Nov 2010 18:56:57 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=20135Our culture is such that most products are pre-wrapped for you, consumer X, because you’re special, and this was mass-produced just for you.

Don’t you feel warm and fuzzy? We live in a disposable society.

The average American generates a little more than four pounds of waste a day, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

But what about the average college student? Does your carbon footprint grow or shrink if you live on campus? And what about commuters?

The good news is, there are a lot of ways to become more environmentally conscious on campus. Students for a Sustainable Campus President Chris Skovron says there is one important thing students can do to “go green” ­­­- adopt a mindset to lessen their impact on the planet.

At Ohio State, students can bring their own bags and mugs to the dining halls instead of using plastic or paper products. However, Dining Services continues to use plastic cutlery and containers because of their low costs.

“As far as the cutlery choices, we are hoping to find a cost-effective option that also meets single-dispense criteria,” said Karri Benishek, marketing director of Campus Dining Services. “Currently, at 32 cents a piece, it just is not a feasible choice for our student population.”

One bright thought to consider next time you eat on campus is this: 30 percent of Dining Services’ purchases come from Ohio farms, helping not only Ohio’s economy, but also the environment, as the distance from the farm to the table (or the reusable tray) is significantly smaller, Benishek said.

Oh the joys of transportation. The average American will spend 36 hours behind the wheel by the end of 2010. That’s more than a day of doing nothing but accelerate, brake, inch forward and brake again.

Anyone living off-campus knows how much time and energy is wasted just trying to drive to and from class, work and most places in between. It can be overwhelming.

So what’s to be done, turn State Route 315 into a pedestrian highway? The EPA suggests carpooling, biking or walking when possible and cutting down on travel in general. So become friends with that guy in economics class who lives in your apartment complex (unless he’s totally creepy), and don’t stress about finding somewhere to park.

If one thing’s been pounded into our heads throughout the years from teachers, parents and most Disney movies, it’s that one person can make a difference. Next time you go on a coffee run, grab a mug before you leave and skip the paper. Or instead of taking four cars to go out, split the gas money and take one. As we become more conscious of our actions and their impact, we will make more responsible decisions. Maybe we can’t turn into Captain Planet overnight, but a few simple changes can amount to something substantial.

These five words are the title of Californian ecologist and entrepreneur David Blume’s book and life’s mission.

Blume travels around the country informing citizens of the downside of “Big Oil” and the potential for bringing back the original car fuel, alcohol.

Blume visited the U. Oregon campus Friday to share his knowledge with Eugene community members, environmentalists and small business owners from local places such as SeQuential Biofuels.

“His whole idea is the decentralization of power and doing it in a way where all the waste … is used back in the system,” said Mel Bankoff, sustainability coordinator for Partners for Sustainable Schools of the Institute for Sustainability Education and Ecology.

Blume said he seeks to empower local communities and return control to farmers.

Blume Distillation is currently looking for investors in order to sell their stills that turn plants into alcohol fuel. By providing farmers and small business owners with these stills, Tom Harvey, Blume’s vice president of marketing, said they could create jobs, and they do not give favoritism to people in power.

“I’m counting on individuals and small companies going out there and starting to make their own fuel,” Blume said.

Blume said there are multiple benefits to switching to alcohol fuel – political, economical and social.

Alcohol was actually the first fuel used in cars, dating back to Henry Ford’s era. When oil companies began taking over, leaders in the field started lobbying for prohibition and gradually pushed alcohol out of the market.

“We have an incredible concentration of power at the corporate level,” Blume said.

He said he wants to return money and power to farmers and citizens by selling them alcohol stills, vehicle conversion kits, and his 2007 book, “Alcohol Can Be a Gas!” with instructions on turning plants and farm waste into car fuel.

“We need the money back in our communities. We need to keep our farmers employed. We have to stop pouring money into these oil companies,” Blume said during the lecture.

Blume contended that the reason more people are not using alternative energy is due to misinformation presented by the media and oil companies.

“The barriers are political, not technical,” Blume said.

Blume argues that there have been many scientific advances that would enable a cleaner fuel model.

Waste products, sewage and various types of plants like cat tails, beets, kudzu, kelp and mesquite can be turned into alcohol. Alcohol is simply water, carbon dioxide and sugar, Blume said.

Ethanol, the most common alcohol fuel, is a cleaner-burning fuel compared to gasoline and emits less carbon monoxide. Cities and states that switch to ethanol-blended fuel have better air quality compared to other cities and states, according to the International Institute for Ecological Agriculture website.

]]>http://uwire.com/2010/10/28/ecologist-touts-alcohol-as-cars%e2%80%99-future-fuel/feed/0Column: The new climate of climate policyhttp://uwire.com/2010/10/19/column-the-new-climate-of-climate-policy/
http://uwire.com/2010/10/19/column-the-new-climate-of-climate-policy/#commentsTue, 19 Oct 2010 20:49:02 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=19564Governor Joe Manchin of West Virginia made sure to kill the cap-and-trade climate bill, even though it was already dead. The coal-state Democrat recently released a television ad where he picks up a rifle and shoots a hole into the middle of a draft of a climate bill.

A cap-and-trade bill passed in the House of Representatives more than a year ago, but it has since died in the Senate. The cap-and-trade concept calls for the United States to set limits on the amount of climate change pollution it emits, then to allow emitters to buy and sell permits to emit up to those limits.

Cap-and-trade is a proposed market-based alternative to direct climate change pollution regulation by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The EPA has had the authority to regulate six greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act since 2007, when the Supreme Court ruled in Massachusetts vs. EPA that greenhouse gases are pollutants. The EPA was ordered to either begin regulating greenhouse gas emissions or present a firm rationale for not doing so. The ensuing study led to an endangerment finding in 2010 when the EPA announced that greenhouse gas emissions threaten human health.

The EPA is expected to begin regulating greenhouse gases in 2011. The Clean Air Act was not written for pollutants that are as high-volume and as widely emitted as some greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, and many fear that Clean Air Act regulation will be far less efficient and effective than regulation under legislation targeting climate change pollution specifically. That is a big part of the reason that climate change has been a matter of debate in Congress, though action seems unlikely now.

As a quick aside, I’d like to explain a few terms that I and others throw around: greenhouse gases, global warming pollution and climate change pollution. Greenhouse gases are gases that tend to hold heat in the atmosphere, such as carbon dioxide or methane. Global warming pollution and climate change pollution are broader, including non-gaseous components such as black carbon. Black carbon refers to very small, dark particles that are generated during combustion. They contribute to warming, and they are especially problematic in snow-covered regions where they land on snow and effectively act like black T-shirts on a hot day, absorbing more of the sun’s energy and contributing to melting. I like to say climate change pollution rather than global warming pollution, since warming is not expected to be uniform, climate change involves problems other than temperature changes, and there are some pollutants that can cool local areas, too. (Don’t get too excited about trying to balance out the effects: Most of the cooling pollutants are pretty nasty to one’s health, and offsetting temperature changes does nothing to prevent carbon dioxide from acidifying the oceans.)

It’s safe to say that Texas is not excited about the prospect of EPA-regulated greenhouse gas emissions. Texas sued the EPA over its endangerment findings earlier this year, and in August, the Attorney General and the chairman of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality sent a letter to the EPA, writing: “On behalf of the State of Texas, we write to inform you that Texas has neither the authority nor the intention of interpreting, ignoring, or amending its laws in order to compel the permitting of greenhouse gas emissions.”

Ouch.

So a market-based approach has been killed repeatedly, and the prospect of the EPA regulating greenhouse gases is loathsome to Texas and a good number of other states. The EPA finds itself in the awkward position of being sued for not doing anything by one group of states, then being sued for doing something by another. Energy and climate issues in the United States do spark political disagreement, obviously, but an interesting corollary to that is that energy and climate disagreements tend to be down regional lines, not party lines. West Virginia Gov. Manchin is a Democrat — but he’s from a coal state.

What do we do? Climate change pollution is a danger to human health and poses a major risk of high cost changes. A market based approach does not seem to be workable; the prospect of direct regulation provokes moans across the country. Political parties cannot really count on uniting opinion within their ranks.

Increasingly, groups are beginning to consider that making renewable energy and efficiency cheap and attractive might be a faster way to get around the climate change pollution issue than trying to subsidize expensive alternatives or put surcharges on what we already have. A report out this week called Post-Partisan Power proposes exactly this, with authors from the American Enterprise Institute, the Brookings Institution and the Breakthrough Institute — right, center, and left. Basically, the call is to fund research, not subsidies, at levels that reflect the importance of energy to the American economy. We’ll see what happens.

The focus of research at U. California-Berkeley is at risk of being too heavily influenced by its partnership with BP, according to a study of 10 collaboration contracts between public research institutions and leading energy companies released Thursday by independent researcher Jennifer Washburn.

Washburn’s report – Big Oil Goes to College – examined the logistics of UC Berkeley’s contract agreement and partnership with BP, stating that the campus is compromising its credibility as a public institution. The campus administration issued an eight-page rebuttal, refuting and responding to the report’s findings, according to campus spokesperson Dan Mogulof.

UC Berkeley was one of three public institutions that won a chunk of BP’s $500 million grant to be distributed over 10 years – starting in early 2007 – for the purpose of researching biofuels as alternative energy. Washburn’s report claims that the direction of the research at UC Berkeley is being overly influenced by the corporation.

UC Berkeley is currently receiving $17.3 million a year from BP to fund biofuel energy research. This amount comprises less than 3 percent of the approximately $724 million in funding received annually by the campus for sponsored research, according to the rebuttal. Mogulof said UC Berkeley was not led into the research by the money.

Mogulof added that BP asked UC Berkeley to join their global competition in 2007 to win the funding and the establishment of the Energy Biosciences Institute, where the research will be conducted, because of the campus’s research priorities – climate change and carbon neutral energy.

Washburn’s report claims, among other things, that there exist troubling “conflict-of-interest concerns,” that BP will “exert excessive influence over UC Berkeley’s research portfolio” and that the language and content of the contract is worrisome.

“Industry-funded research is overwhelmingly more likely to favor the sponsor’s projects and interests as compared with research funded by non-profits or government sources,” she said. “The EBI’s current academic director has equity interests in an outside biotech firm that currently has its own business alliance with none other than BP.”

The rebuttal contested this claim, stating that the institute’s director Chris Somerville voluntarily removed himself from “all operational involvement with the companies” and adding that he “does not hold a management, scientific or consulting affiliation” with the biotech firms.

Though the report claims that the contract does not grant an academic majority to the Governance Board – EBI’s main governing body – Mogulof said equal representation on the board was a “negotiated compromise.” Four of the board’s eight members are from UC Berkeley, four are from BP and since all actions of the board must have the affirmative vote of at least five members, each member has a veto power.

Washburn said in conducting the study, it was difficult to get in touch with campus officials, so she “simply tried to look at the actual research agreement that the university signed.”

But Mogulof said he regrets that she did not take the time to talk to faculty members that advise the administration.

“We don’t want to see and will not stand for any tainting of the integrity of our research or our researchers,” he said.

]]>http://uwire.com/2010/10/19/report-u-research-influenced-too-heavily-by-bp/feed/0Editorial: Bottle it uphttp://uwire.com/2010/10/13/editorial-bottle-it-up/
http://uwire.com/2010/10/13/editorial-bottle-it-up/#commentsWed, 13 Oct 2010 21:01:57 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=19328Over 98 brands of bottled water are sold in the U.S., a country that has some of the most reliable, sanitary, and clean tap water in the world. Do we really need to be purchasing these bottles? A growing movement on college campuses nationwide claims we do not, arguing against the bottled water industry and calling on universities across the country to ban the product’s sale on campuses. By replacing bottled water with public reusable-water-bottle filling stations, colleges are making it easier for students to quit their habit. We believe that Harvard should join the movement.

Those promoting the ban are correct to label disposable bottles as detrimental to the environment. They produce large quantities of unnecessary waste, and reports suggest that over 68 percent of recyclable bottles are not recycled properly. Despite appearances, bottled water is often merely normal tap water that has been filtered through a process called reverse osmosis, which can require almost 10 gallons of water to purify one gallon. Such waste is simply unnecessary.

Additionally, packaging and transportation produce carbon emissions that could easily be avoided. Considering that the tap water available in our faucets is already filtered and of high quality, buying a bottle provides negligible benefits while contributing to the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. By banning the sale of bottled water on campus, Harvard could do its part to decrease these harmful emissions.

That is not to suggest, however, that merely installing water-bottle filling stations is the perfect answer. Nalgenes and other reusable water bottles cost more than disposable bottles, and universities like Harvard should provide discounted reusable water bottles to make sure all students have access to them.

Beyond the ban, colleges should continue to seek opportunities to be environmentally responsible, and, of equal importance, engage and educate students about the steps they are taking so as to change student behavior. While ideally measures like the ban would yield life-long habits, even reducing students’ waste for their four years on campus would be beneficial. We commend Harvard for its open dialogue about environmental initiatives and hope that the University continues to inform its students about the ways on campus that they can already make responsible choices. Moving forward, adopting the ban would serve as further evidence that green truly is the new crimson.

A U. California-Berkeley scientist has found that lizards, which normally lead solitary lives, can form social groups too, according to a study released online in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences Oct. 6.

According to the researchers, some desert night lizards formed nuclear families, complete with two parents and a number of offspring. The close-knit family structure of the lizards differs from other species because most lizards do not interact with others unless fighting for resources or mating.

The sociality is primarily explained by the fact that desert night lizards give birth to live offspring rather than laying eggs, said Alison Davis, a UC Berkeley postdoctoral student and lead author of the study.

“The standard sort of lizard archetype is that the lizard hatches from an egg, it grows up very quickly, it mates and then it dies,” Davis said.

Desert night lizards, by contrast, form a connection between mother and offspring in giving birth. Because live births occur less frequently per year, lizards who give birth to live offspring have a longer lifespan than those who lay eggs.

“They’ve demonstrated convincingly, perhaps for the first time, that there’s been a completely independent demonstration of social behavior in another group of animals,” said Ted Papenfuss, a research scientist at UC Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology.

Davis began research for the study as a graduate student at UC Santa Cruz in August 2003. Over the course of the next five years, Davis and her team looked under Joshua trees in the Mojave Desert, observing a total of 2,120 lizards and classifying them by age group.

The researchers also collected samples from the lizards’ tails to conduct paternity testing using their DNA. Juvenile lizards were found still living with parent lizards up to three years after birth, according to the study.

“What is particularly exciting is that the same sorts of patterns are observed in social mammals and birds,” said Ammon Corl, who co-authored the study when he was a former graduate student at UC Santa Cruz, in an e-mail.

Because desert night lizards offer relatively little parental care after childbirth, it is not yet clear why offspring are staying with the parents for as long as they are, Davis said. She said researchers are currently attempting to discover the reasons lizard offspring choose to stay and continue to share resources rather than seeking another area.

Davis said the best way to understand if the offspring are genuinely attached to their parents is to transplant juveniles to another set of parents.

Barry Sinervo, Davis’ adviser in the study and a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz, said that while these “social” lizards are being found, they are slowly going extinct because of climate change.

“You’d hate to have all of this biology disappear before you can show it to your kids,” Sinervo said.

]]>http://uwire.com/2010/10/12/study-says-some-lizards-form-social-groups-families/feed/0Column: Is centrism the new radicalism?http://uwire.com/2010/10/11/column-is-centrism-the-new-radicalism/
http://uwire.com/2010/10/11/column-is-centrism-the-new-radicalism/#commentsMon, 11 Oct 2010 15:49:41 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=19157The military could become the biggest funder of Green Technology in America. The military is requesting bids for additional battle-tested renewable energy research.

On Oct. 4, 2010, the New York Times reported that the military, concerned by its dependence on foreign oil, is going to be deploying a unit of Marines who will survive off of renewable technology. They plan to use solar-chargers for the communications equipment; solar-shaded tents to provide shade and electricity; and energy-conserving light bulbs.

The reason this news is so fascinating is because it is ironic: The military, usually associated with Conservative Republican values, is hell-bent on using Green Energy, the symbol of Liberal Democratic progressivism, to wage its wars more efficiently.

If the military succeeds, the United States will be able to fight wars longer and with a lower carbon-footprint. They will also, as a side effect, create an entire industry of battle-tested, military-grade renewable energy technology…which I will probably be able to put on the roof of my house when the military is done with it.

This all speaks to a larger issue that America faces today: neither the Republicans nor the Democrats have any good ideas anymore. We see the stress this is causing our country in the polarization of politics that we are witnessing today.

Perhaps there is a solution: Synthesize both Republican and Democratic ideas. Instead of yelling at each other, maybe we could sit down and calmly discuss how the military could secretly subsidize the entire environmentalist cause of renewable energy. That way the Republicans will not get angry that we are subsidizing the renewable energy industry and the Democrats will not get angry that we are spending too much on the military.

The military is not the only organization catching on to this idea. It is everywhere. Last week Thursday, at a Spark M. Matsunaga Center for Peace Studies panel discussion on torture at the William S. Richardson School of Law, Col. Larry Wilkerson, a former Colin Powell aide and fierce critic of the Bush Administration’s Enhanced Interrogation policy (he called it torture) was asked this simple question:

“Why be a Republican at all? Why not just be a Democrat?”

It was a question that a lot of moderate Republicans–the kind who don’t understand how the Republican Party, the party of small government, personal liberty, and self-reliance, became the party of Big Government Conservatives, the Patriot Act and Medicare Part D– are asking themselves these days.

And Wilkerson had an answer.

“There isn’t a whisper of difference between the basic domestic and foreign policies of the presidents of either party for the last 60 years. I don’t think it matters anymore that you’re democratic or republican, because neither really has, or seems to have the answers, or if they have the answers, the courage to execute… .

“There’s a radical thought that the center is now radical. In fact there are a couple of think tanks in Washington that claim the radical center, because that is the radical thing to do these days; not be Rush Limbaugh and not be Nancy Pelosi,” said Wilkerson.

One week later I attended a talk on immigration put on by the Federalist Society at the WSRSL. The speaker, Dr. James Jay Carafano, identified himself as an independent and he worked for the Heritage Foundation, which is the official Conservative Think Tank of Washington, D.C.

I expected the speaker to be a radical, ranting conservative yelling about Mexicans taking their jobs and securing the border. What he turned out to be was a perfectly sensible independent who said that “securing the border” never works and that we really need to secure the Mexican economy if we want to reduce the amount of Mexican immigration to the United States.

Is it possible that centrism could be the new radicalism? Would the center be radical enough to suggest that the Military use Green Technology to more efficiently fight its wars? Would it be centrist to suggest that Teacher’s Unions are actually hindering education reform all across the country? Could it be centrist to that immigration is a more complex problem than just installing a border fense?

The time has come for a new wave in politics. Maybe it will be called the Radical Center. Whatever it’s called, I hope it’s smart enough to give our troops machines that can convert readily available plant life (read ‘Poppy Seeds’) life into bio-fuels.

]]>http://uwire.com/2010/10/11/column-is-centrism-the-new-radicalism/feed/0Column: Preliminary spill reports rightfully criticize adminstrationhttp://uwire.com/2010/10/11/column-preliminary-spill-reports-rightfully-criticize-adminstration/
http://uwire.com/2010/10/11/column-preliminary-spill-reports-rightfully-criticize-adminstration/#commentsMon, 11 Oct 2010 14:02:50 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=19155On June 14th of this year, President Obama appointed a commission of seven men and women to evaluate the events that contributed to the Deepwater Horizon spill. The commission, organized less than two months after the spill began but a full month before the oil stopped flowing, released its initial reports this week. In one report, a working paper titled “The Amount and Fate of the Oil,” the staff of the commission issues a withering criticism of the federal government’s own estimates of the amount of oil in the Gulf after the spill and throughout the clean-up process:

“…the federal government created the impression that it was either not fully competent to handle the spill or not fully candid with the American people about the scope of the problem.”

The aforementioned report challenges administration estimates of the amount of oil that was initially flowing into the Gulf and the amount of oil that remained in the Gulf at the end of August, after extensive clean-up efforts. Crucially, a NOAA scientist reported a flow rate of 5,000 barrels-per-day on April 26th. This number was used by Admiral Mary Landry, who was the ranking on-scene official at the time. While this number was still being used, a number of credible, non-government scientists estimated flows between 10,000 and 50,000 barrels-per-day, with some internal BP estimates placing the flow above 100,000 barrels-per-day. The danger in the government’s initial reliance on the 5,000 barrels-per-day statistic? The response to the spill was organized based on estimated oil flow.

The commission has also challenged the conclusion of Carol Browner, the White House climate advisor, that “three-quarters of the oil is gone,” a statement she made in early August.

The commission is chaired by two former government officials: Bob Graham, formerly a senator for and governor of Florida, and William Reilly, who served as the director of the Environmental Protection Agency under President George H.W. Bush. The remaining five members are all academics, including Cherry Murray, who is Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard.

It is important to note that these reports do not represent the official opinion of the commission, which will be released in a final report next year. It is highly unlikely, however, that these working papers would have been posted to the commission’s website if the members of the commission did not agree with their analysis.

The report is a direct challenge to an administration that has prided itself on its relationship to science. President Obama pledged to maintain a new attitude of transparency in the sciences, in light of President George W. Bush’s perceived neglect of scientific knowledge and method. While President Obama made a series of very public appointments of top scientists to advisory positions, this report reveals the dilemma faced by any politician when the diligence of scientific reporting challenges political expediency.

In a heartbreaking account on NPR’s Science Friday in early June, the renowned oceanographer Sylvia Earle (“the sturgeon general”) described the lack of scientific knowledge about oceans. And yet, the administration condoned the release of dispersants into the Gulf post-spill. Earle and her on-air counterpart, the physicist Lawrence Krauss, lamented the public’s expectation that science provide immediate answers to massive crises. This desire, in the eyes of these two scientists and this blogger, is juxtaposed with a general unwillingness to fund scientific endeavor at a federal level.

President Obama has rightfully tried to involve scientists in decision-making, and his administration has demonstrated its belief that science can play a great role in the resolution of national problems, particularly at an environmental level. This willingness, however, needs to be met in practice. President Obama has made a noble effort, but the reports of the Commission show reluctance on behalf of the administration to listen to independent scientists even when an issue of grave national crisis is unfolding. President Bush often did exhibit an outright disregard for science, but proclaiming a love for science but failing to heed its warnings may be downright dishonest.

As part of a collaboration between Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, scientists are searching for alternatives to reduce the potentially harmful effects of global warming.

The study, released in the journal BioScience Oct. 1, examines how various genetically modified plants process excess carbon dioxide and store or convert it into different forms of carbon. While plants and trees already dampen the impact of carbon emissions by absorbing the gas, genetically modifying plants would amplify their capabilities.

Christer Jansson, lead author of the study’s review, said he believes that using genetically modified plants to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions is important for the future in lessening the effects of global warming.

The study states that “because of their extensive root systems, which commonly exceed depths of two meters, perennial grasses and trees … store a substantial quantity of (carbon) as root biomass.”

Jansson said by engineering and altering these plants, scientists have the ability to mitigate carbon dioxide emissions by storing excess gas in underground plant roots for what could be hundreds of years. But this process is not possible without the engineering of new plants and modification of existing ones.

Jansson added that one way to improve the usage of these crops is to look for plants that can grow in difficult circumstances, which would allow scientists to focus on other tasks.

“If we develop plants that can grow without fresh water supply, or even during a drought, it would be very important for a sustainable system,” he said. “One way to do that is to engineer plants that can be more efficient and produce biomass.”

An example of a more versatile plant is one that can survive on saline water but does not produce much biomass, Jansson said.

According to the study, an ongoing challenge scientists face is plants’ inability to receive sunlight throughout the entire day, reducing their efficiency.

“All plants experience extended periods of non-light-saturated conditions; for example, in the morning and later afternoon,” the study states.

Genetically engineering plants to receive more sunlight would allow them to be converted into larger quantities of biomass. By creating more biomass, the quality of the crop would increase the amount of carbon dioxide that can be stored.

Jansson said he believes that by the year 2050, genetic engineering and this sort of storage system will have absorbed 3 billion tons of excess carbon per year from the atmosphere, reducing the effects of global warming.

]]>http://uwire.com/2010/10/06/genetically-altered-plants-may-mitigate-effects-of-global-warming/feed/0New investigation into climate change researchhttp://uwire.com/2010/10/06/new-investigation-into-climate-change-research/
http://uwire.com/2010/10/06/new-investigation-into-climate-change-research/#commentsWed, 06 Oct 2010 16:13:55 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=19009Virginia’s Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli reissued a civil investigative demand to U. Virginia last Wednesday concerning research grants received by former University Prof. Michael Mann for his climate change research, according to an announcement Cuccinelli made Monday

Cuccinelli — who is accusing Mann of using manipulated or deceitful data to obtain taxpayer-funded research grants — hopes to use this renewed subpoena to acquire documents that will enable him to prosecute Mann under the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act.

Cuccinelli initially issued a subpoena for the records in April. The University opposed the request to relinquish the documents, and Albemarle County circuit judge Paul Peatross, Jr. rejected the demand on the grounds that it lacked necessary information and did not focus specifically on grants paid for by state dollars. According to Peatross’ conclusion, “it is not clear what [Mann] did that was misleading, false or fraudulent in obtaining funds from the Commonwealth of Virginia.” Cuccinelli, however, is appealing the original ruling to the state supreme court.

According to a Monday press release from the attorney general, “the new CID has been drafted to comply with the judge’s ruling, contains information the judge believed was necessary and is more limited in scope than the prior CIDs.” The revised demand focuses on one specific state grant, four less than the number addressed by the CID issued in April.

Mann, who is now a meteorology professor at Pennsylvania State University, believes the new CID is misdirected. Cuccinelli’s claims of fraud have been directed specifically against climate change research conducted by Mann two decades ago. The grant discussed in the most recent demand, however, was used to pay for an unrelated study, Mann said.

“The grant that Mr. Cuccinelli cites supported the study of natural land-vegetation-atmosphere interaction in the African savanna,” Mann stated in an e-mail.

Mann added that his role in the project funded by this grant was relatively minor.

“The grant had nothing to do with climate change at all, let alone my specific work on paleoclimate from the 1990s that Mr. Cuccinelli continues to misrepresent and attack with false, thoroughly discredited, allegations,” Mann said. “Neither of the two articles on paleoclimate that Mr. Cuccinelli attacks in the CID are even mentioned or cited in the grant proposal.”

Nevertheless, Cuccinelli has repeatedly cited one graph Mann used to present his climate change findings.

“Dr. Mann’s Hockey Stick graph is based on suspect data,” Cuccinelli stated in the Monday press release. “Others have shown that random numbers can be put into Mann’s algorithm, and they always produce a hockey stick graph.”

University spokesperson Carol Wood released a statement expressing the University’s intent to continue to resist Cuccinelli’s demands for documents.

“University leaders are disappointed that the institution must continue to litigate with the Attorney General, but will continue to stand for the principles the University has articulated since the CIDs were first put forward in April — and to support academic communities here and elsewhere,” Wood said.

Mann said he believes the investigation is an attack specifically designed to thwart efforts to conduct global warming research.

“I find it extremely disturbing that Mr. Cuccinelli seeks to continue to abuse his power as the attorney general of Virginia in this way, pursuing an ongoing smear campaign against the University of Virginia, me and other climate scientists,” Mann said. “All Virginian citizens ought to be extremely concerned that he is using their tax dollars to pursue a partisan witch hunt.”

The law firm Hogan Lovells, which successfully represented the University in circuit court this summer, will be commissioned again by the University to review the most recent round of demands from the attorney general. The litigation has so far cost the University $352,874.76, Wood said, adding that the fees have been paid for from private funds.

Could a coconut car be coming to a dealership near you? If Walter Bradley’s business plan works out, it very well might.

Bradley, an engineering professor at Baylor U., discussed his efforts to develop products made from coconuts — a cheaper and more environmentally conscious alternative to conventional fibers used in car interiors — in a lecture on Friday at Dartmouth College.

In his speech, “Creating Technology to Convert Renewable Resources into Value-Added Products: The Case of the Coconut,” Bradley explained that creative engineering solutions can be a “win-win-win,” benefiting corporations, impoverished communities and the environment.

Coconuts are an “abundant, renewable resource, owned primarily by poor people in developing countries,” Bradley said. Although Bradley said he started out as a “total ignoramus when it comes to coconuts,” he was able to work with other scientists to take advantage of the coconut and create a program that made them profitable, he said.

Bradley sought to take advantage of oft-discarded portions of the coconut, particularly the husk, which composes one third of the fruit’s biomass, he said. Discarded husks become enormous piles of waste that are difficult to dispose of, as the husks do not readily burn, he said. In some countries, such as Vietnam, discarded coconut shells clog rivers, causing further environmental damage.

Traditionally, about 85 percent of the coconut husk goes unused, he said. In the worst-case scenario, when husks are burned, more pollution is added to the environment.

Bradley hopes to find an application for the burn-resistant, moisture-resistant, odor-free and hypoallergenic properties of coconut fibers that makes a profit and helps poor farmers, he said.

Together with Hobbs Bonded Fibers of Waco, Texas — which already has contracts with several automakers — Bradley said he has found a way to manufacture trunk liners, among other automotive components, by combining coconut fibers with polypropylene.

Bradley is also looking into other applications of coconut parts, including potting soil, diaper filler and fire-proof green building materials, he said.

Bradley said he was inspired to begin looking for a way to help poor communities as a way to apply his experience working with graphite epoxy, a material used on fighter jets and spacecraft.

“What could I use [my experience] for to help people in developing countries?” Bradley said. “At the time I really didn’t have any idea, because I knew developing countries really did not need graphite epoxy.”

Fifty billion coconuts per year are grown in a band 20 degrees north and south of the equator around the world, where the majority of inhabitants, except those of Singapore, are poor subsistence farmers, according to Bradley. Bradley explained that most coconut farmers have an average annual income of about 500 dollars and about five or six children.

“Most coconut farmers have two to four acres,” Bradley said. “Every time they have a family with two or three sons, the acres get smaller and smaller and smaller.”

Ultimately, the cycle of poverty continues, as parents cannot afford to pay for the auxiliary costs of school — books and uniforms — even when the education itself is free, he said.

Bradley received funding for his efforts from the National Science Foundation. Prior to teaching at Baylor, Bradley was the department head of Texas A&M University’s mechanical engineering department.

]]>http://uwire.com/2010/10/05/professor-finds-uses-for-coconut-waste/feed/0Column: As world oil consumption reaches peak decisions must be madehttp://uwire.com/2010/10/05/column-as-world-oil-consumption-reaches-peak-decisions-must-be-made/
http://uwire.com/2010/10/05/column-as-world-oil-consumption-reaches-peak-decisions-must-be-made/#commentsTue, 05 Oct 2010 13:52:36 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=18923Our world is at a turning point, and how we choose to act in the next few years will determine the fate of many generations to come. I’m referring to the looming global oil crisis, and its inevitable effects. Oil is a tremendous source of energy, it makes economic activity possible and affords the average person of today a standard of living far beyond that of the wealthiest elites just a few generations ago.

Petroleum and other hydrocarbon fuels have freed us from toil and manual labor, transforming our daily lives in the process. It would almost be impossible to exaggerate our dependence on petroleum. It powers the plows in our fields, it brings our food to us from an average distance of 1,200 miles; it takes us to work and back; its by-products are converted into pharmaceuticals and much more.

Unfortunately, the future of world oil production is dubious. There is only so much oil in the ground and most of it has already been discovered. It is for this reason that dangerous projects like the deepwater horizon well in the gulf of Mexico are being pursued. All of the low hanging fruit has been cleared, and we are frantically seeking ways to replace production from declining wells, many of which have been in production for more than 50 years.

We consume four barrels of oil for every one that we find, and that disparity is widening. The world consumes about 81 million barrels of oil a day, and that consumption – fueled by giants like China and India – is growing every year. The common misconception is that the problems will begin when we run out of oil.

Simply divide the remaining oil, roughly 1.2 trillion barrels, by our current rate of consumption, and 40 years are left until we use the last drop. This formula is flawed for two reasons. First, it fails to take into account the fact that world demand for oil is growing. The second fallacy is that it assumes that it is possible to extract oil at the same rate until a given well is pumped dry. Under normal conditions, production from an oil well follows a bell-like curve. There is a peak production point on the curve and from there, the rate of extraction falls to zero – incapable of reaching its previous high. Entire regions follow the same pattern, and it is a near certainty that the world will as well.

World production of conventional oil peaked in 2005. Since then, unconventional sources, like offshore drilling, coupled with a downturn in demand due to the recession have forestalled the inevitable gap between supply and demand.

What does a decline in the availability of oil mean for us? Quite simply, further economic growth will not be possible, and we will start to see the global economy shrink and become more localized. Without an abundance of oil to manufacture pesticides and fertilizers, food production will plummet. Economic downturns that will make the recent crisis seem like a walk in the park are inevitable. This isn’t a rosy picture and, unfortunately, it isn’t even the half of it, but there are some things we can do to cushion the fall. On an individual level, we would be wise to make economic decisions based upon limited access to oil and gasoline in the future. Minimizing commutes and excessive driving as well as growing some of our own food (and buying locally) are a step in the right direction.

]]>http://uwire.com/2010/10/05/column-as-world-oil-consumption-reaches-peak-decisions-must-be-made/feed/0Research identifies global river crisishttp://uwire.com/2010/10/05/u-wisconsin-prof-reports-global-river-crisis/
http://uwire.com/2010/10/05/u-wisconsin-prof-reports-global-river-crisis/#commentsTue, 05 Oct 2010 13:51:24 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=19027The world’s rivers are in greater danger than previously assumed, according to a new study co-authored by a U.Wisconsin researcher.

Peter B. McIntyre, a senior author of the new study and UW professor of zoology, said this study was distinguished from the other studies done on water pollution because “this study gives us a unified analysis that tells us the whole story, in terms of bringing together all the different kinds of data.”

The study, released Sept. 29, said although water is “the most essential of natural resources” it is threatened most by humans through interventions such as dams.

The study pointed out that nearly 80 percent of the world’s population relies on water sources that are compromised by human intervention, like pollution and agricultural runoff.

The best way to ensure the success of water management is to balance human resource use with ecosystem protection, the survey said.

McIntyre said the biggest challenge to meeting this balance is whether or not the country is industrialized or developing.

According to McIntyre, the industrialized world has a legacy of using engineering prowess to solve natural problems.

“It’s not solving the underlying problem,” he said. “Rather than working within the parameters of the natural ecosystem, we have used our engineering know-how to fix ever greater problems.”

New problems such as water pollution and water shortages simply encourage the usage of higher technology and engineering, McIntyre said, but the technology and engineering mask the problem, they do not fix it.

“We’re giving the illusion to the public that we’re solving this water problem. But there’s no perception at all that there’s any risk to our water supply,” McIntyre said.

The irony, McIntyre said, is that we keep abusing the ecosystem yet we perceive things are actually getting better because we still manage to maintain the appearance of high water security due to huge economic investments.

“Put these things together, and it’s a potential recipe for disaster if we don’t get our house in order as soon as possible,” he added.

The study also focuses on the implications of freshwater pollution on our society and what we can do to reverse it.

The report was authored by an international coalition of scientists led by McIntyre and Charles J. Vörösmarty, an expert on global water resources from the City University of New York.

The study originated in February 2008 when the first worldwide study on marine ecosystems was released. It incorporated multiple topics on ocean ecology, McIntyre said

At about the same time a group of scientists, including McIntyre and Vörösmarty, convened in Seattle and started the idea to write a comparable study on freshwater ecosystems.

The biggest obstacle to the study was looking at the multiple factors including water quality, water resource development, the use of water in industrialized countries and biodiversity threats among others, McIntyre said.

“The problem with analyzing factors one at a time was that we hardly ever had a study that told us the big picture,” McIntyre said.

Despite these challenges, McIntyre said the study was unique because it focused on multiple issues rather than one.

]]>http://uwire.com/2010/10/05/u-wisconsin-prof-reports-global-river-crisis/feed/0Wildfires a fact of life in Russiahttp://uwire.com/2010/09/29/wildfires-a-fact-of-life-for-russia/
http://uwire.com/2010/09/29/wildfires-a-fact-of-life-for-russia/#commentsWed, 29 Sep 2010 17:08:35 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=18643The largest country in the world by area, the Russian Federation, has frigid winters and moderate summers, in which temperatures rarely top 70 degrees. This July, record temperatures exceeded 105 degrees, hitting the nation with a high price.

The wildfires began on July 29 and spread to central and western Russia. Fires even reached the border town of Bryansk, an area near Ukraine contaminated with radioactive material following the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Had fire reached Chernobyl, it could have created a wave of radioactive pollution.

The death toll hit 50 by mid-August, and the fires created significant infrastructure damage, amounting to an estimated $15 billion US.

With hundreds of deadly wildfires raging across Russia, citizens and spectators from around the world wondered if the massive disaster could have been avoided and if the Russian government neglected the safety of its people.

Scientists have suggested that wildfires are a natural part of Russia’s ecology, and little could have been done to prevent them.

“[First], there must be lots of fuel. Usually fuel is dead leaves, twigs, and stems that accumulate in old, undisturbed forests. Second, there must be hot, dry weather. Cool, moist air will coat the fuel with water and prevent fire. Third, there needs to be a spark to start the fire. Lightening is a primary cause, but humans do a good job too. Therefore, the heat wave did contribute to the fires, but only because there was abundant fuel.”

Fires are difficult to control. According to Cornell Prof. Timothy Fahey, natural resources, they will inevitably burn a large area in a dry, windy summer. However, they are natural and often necessary.

“To think of [a fire] as a disaster, is probably not appropriate because it’s something that happens in the course of ecology,” he said. “Naturally, in a forest in an area like Moscow or in any part of the northern world, the forest burns down about once a century. They always have, and they always will.”

Since forest fires are common in dry climates, trees species there have evolved to recover quickly from the fires. Yet, Yavitt described, “in the wetter climate near Moscow … tree species might not have good adaptations for fire.”

Some fires may also scorch soil or cause other damage, like erosion. “An eroded soil will have less productivity, and thus the regenerating vegetation might be stunted, or worse, converted to weeds and weedy shrubs, rather than trees,” Yavitt explained.

Despite the detrimental outcomes of most wildfires, they may benefit forests. Wildfires kill pathogenic fungi that may potentially harm trees. They can also help recycle some of the nutrients within trees so that the next generation grows back healthy.

“A fire that burns old dead trees and does not scorch the soil can leave a modest layer of ash on the soil surface,” Yavitt said. “Ash is essentially all of the nutrients locked up in old, dying and dead trees, and thus ash is a very good fertilizer for the next generation of trees.”

Because many trees in areas where forest fires are prevalent develop adaptations to withstand them, increased efforts to suppress forest fires may jeopardize forest cycles.

“By suppressing fires, people have changed the way the system works, and that’s coming back to bite us,” Fahey said. “People build houses in areas susceptible to wildfires, so they obviously try to prevent them, but by suppressing them, you’re only letting fuel build up, causing the fire to be a lot worse when it does happen.”

In order to regulate forest fire suppression, many areas in the United States hold controlled burns – burning areas under safe conditions during cool months with the necessary tools for control in place. These burns diminish the amount of fuel present and reduce the intensity of naturally-occurring fires.

“[Controlled burns] definitely reduce the intensity of wildfires. You’re going to get the fires anyway, but instead of being really, really hot fires that just burn everything, you’re going to get a cooler fire, which allows more trees to survive,” Fahey said.

Fahey also explained that controlled burns could reduce the carbon dioxide emissions caused by wildfires. “If you have a controlled burn and get rid of some of the fuel, it releases some of the carbon dioxide,” he said. “But if you don’t get rid of the fuel and there is a fire, then you burn the whole forest and that releases a lot more carbon dioxide.”

Though the heat wave and the resulting wildfires in Russia were unexpected, future fires may come as no surprise due to global warming. According to Yavitt, “ If global warming leads to drier conditions, then fires might occur during heat waves and produce fires similar to [those of] Summer 2010.”

]]>http://uwire.com/2010/09/29/wildfires-a-fact-of-life-for-russia/feed/0Rising temperatures turn tide for coral reefshttp://uwire.com/2010/09/29/rising-temperatures-turn-tide-for-coral-reefs/
http://uwire.com/2010/09/29/rising-temperatures-turn-tide-for-coral-reefs/#commentsWed, 29 Sep 2010 11:58:19 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=18626This year’s unusually warm summer was the cause of many health issues for humans worldwide — poor air quality, heat stroke and fire danger were only a few examples. But humans and other land dwellers aren’t the only species that suffer from hot weather. One marine ecosystem in particular has scientists worried: coral reefs.

Reefs in Indonesia suffered a large bleaching event this summer, where temperatures of 93 degrees Fahrenheit were reported in surface waters of the Andaman sea, off the coasts of Thailand and Myanmar. This is about 7 degrees above long-term averages for that area. Fortunately, temperatures are beginning to drop again in the Pacific, but scientists now warn that Caribbean reefs may be at risk of experiencing a similar bleaching event.

Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration indicates that bleaching is likely to occur in the southern and southeastern Caribbean. Above-average temperatures have been recorded in the Caribbean throughout this summer, and it is predicted that coral reefs will continue to be stressed until mid-October.

“Based on these temperatures, NOAA has issued a bleaching warning for the western Pacific and the Caribbean,” said Jon Corsiglia of NOAA’s Office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management. Bleaching has also been reported in the western Gulf of Mexico and the Bahamas.

Such environmental stresses can prompt reflection on the ecological importance of coral reefs. Closely related to jellyfish and anemones, coral reefs provide food and shelter for a myriad of fish, shellfish and crustacean species.

“A lot of fish species use coral as spawning grounds, so [bleaching] could seriously impact fish populations,” Reidenbach said.

Reefs are also important to the fishing and tourism industries of many coastal and island communities worldwide.

For example, some fish species that appear on restaurant menus can be affected.

“Groupers are heavily fished in the Caribbean and rely heavily on coral reefs,” fourth-year College student Alia Al-Haj said. “So fishing for them will be severely affected [by coral bleaching].”

Overall, a single hectare — about 2.47 acres — of coral reef provides $130,000-1.2 million in services to humans per year, according to estimates made by experts at the DIVERSITAS biodiversity conference held in Cape Town, South Africa last October. Other studies estimate the total worth of coral reefs globally to be about $375 billion a year.

This economic importance causes experts to be particularly interested in why coral reefs can respond so negatively to high temperatures — as well as in what can be done to mitigate these effects.

“You often don’t know the causes, but we know that coral bleach when they are stressed,” said Matthew Reidenbach, an assistant environmental sciences professor at U. Virginia.

Most reef-building corals play host to an alga called zooxanthellae, Corsiglia said. The corals feed on the organic material produced by the alga, he said, but when temperatures rise, this relationship is disrupted.

“The metabolism of the algae speeds out of control, and the corals eject the algae due, in part, to buildup of toxic waste products,” Corsiglia said. When this occurs, the coral pales and the white calcium carbonate skeleton of the coral can be seen.

“It doesn’t necessarily kill the coral right away, but it can if they’re bleached for too long a period, around two or three years,” Reidenbach said.

He added that some coral species tend to be less resilient than others and are less capable of withstanding wide swings in temperature.

Despite these challenges, there are several steps that reef managers — officials tasked with protecting and preserving coral reefs — can take to help reduce bleaching of coral reefs. Officials can, for example, restrict potentially harmful activities such as diving and fishing, or they can artificially shade parts of a reef or reduce coastal runoff and pollution in the surrounding area. “A healthy coral reef is more able to recover,” Corsiglia said.

Global warming mitigation may benefit the coral reefs, as well.

“In the long term, reducing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions is vital to addressing the resulting impacts of rising temperatures,” Corsiglia said. “If we fail at that, other coral ecosystem management efforts could be futile.”

Ultimately, however, Reidenbach said it is likely that there will be more bleaching events in the future, especially as warming trends continue. These trends can raise a host of new issues.

“It’s an interesting question. I think we’re seeing more and more occurrences of bleaching worldwide, and the last big one happened after El Niño when there was large-scale warming of the ocean,” Reidenbach said. “As atmospheric temperatures rise, so does water temperature. The question is whether coral can adapt.”

]]>http://uwire.com/2010/09/29/rising-temperatures-turn-tide-for-coral-reefs/feed/0Plastic from Great Pacific Garbage Patch may cycle to Hawai‘ihttp://uwire.com/2010/09/27/plastic-from-great-pacific-garbage-patch-may-cycle-to-hawai%e2%80%98i/
http://uwire.com/2010/09/27/plastic-from-great-pacific-garbage-patch-may-cycle-to-hawai%e2%80%98i/#commentsMon, 27 Sep 2010 16:47:31 +0000adminhttp://uwire.com/?p=18515Before you litter another plastic bottle, think about the ocean and the ‘aina. Plastic collects in the ocean, in at least five significant areas, and may eventually end up on the shores of Hawai‘i from trash that accumulates in the Pacific Gyre.

Nikolai Maximenko, senior researcher at the International Pacific Research Center at U. Hawaii-Mānoa, headed a team that developed a computer model which charts the likely paths of floating marine debris and where it concentrates in the ocean.

“Our model helps to familiarize the concept,” said Maximenko, who began developing the model three years ago.

“One idea, that we are researching, is that Hawai‘i is the final destination for the North Pacific debris. Whatever is dropped in the North Pacific still drifts to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and it will all end up on Hawaiian beaches,” he said. This happens occasionally when currents change, allowing trash to escape the vortex. When this occurs, the trash is likely to end up in Hawai‘i. Pieces that don’t find their way to the islands cycle back to the Pacific garbage patch.

Maximenko co-authored a paper based on research done by the Sea Education Association (SEA), Woods Hole Oceanic Institution, and the University of Hawai‘i.

The paper was based on data collected over 22 years by undergraduate students of the SEA Semester program who collected samples of plastic in surface plankton nets at over six thousand locations. The paper was published in Science Express magazine in August.

Results were also based on observations of about 12,000 satellite-tracked, free drifting buoys. The buoys measure ocean current velocities and where the flows separate or diverge or where they come together and converge. The areas where the flows converge are areas highly likely to collect debris. Maximenko’s model has predicted and identified five patches of debris, located at th